


maybe there is a beast

by harringroveheart



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Billy has mommy issues, Child Abuse/Emotional Abuse, Drug Use, Enemies to Not-Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Season/Series 02, Sexual Tension, Slow Burn, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2020-02-28 23:00:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 50,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18766060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harringroveheart/pseuds/harringroveheart
Summary: Harrington goes belly-up without much of a fuss, cradling his head like he’s still trapped in the moment of a plate breaking over it. Billy barely sees him – can’t hear a thing over the rush of adrenaline. He’ll remember details later: the drawn-out hurt sound Harrington couldn’t control; the way he’d staggered, tried to draw away out of Billy’s grip, instinctively afraid to get hit again; the limp roll of his head side to side and the slick spill of blood as his lip split open. The unexpected sting of the needle.Or: Billy Hargrove is about to learn the hard way – if you come at the king, you best not miss.





	1. we are going to have fun on this island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I'm new here but here we go...  
> +[[ Tumblr ]](https://harringroveheart.tumblr.com/)  
> +[[ Harringrove Playlist ]](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ovtygtvvCjF0vvOXKRY2j)

 

Steve Harrington punches like a rich kid and a pussy.

It’s more performance than anything, Billy can tell. A sort of resignation to the windup, the cheesy line, like he’s only half-way committed to the role - Steve Harrington, fearless protector.

The idiot telegraphs the whole thing too, like he’s never gotten into a brawl that wasn’t a show for some high school cow. Shaking out his fist like he’s already anticipating the sting in his knuckles. Billy lets it connect anyway. Because he’s been itching to get his evils out, sure, but also because this whole night has been fucked all to hell, so upside down and frustrating and just plain _weird_ ;Max’s open window, the ugly little melodrama with his dad, the long dark drive to Shithole Byers – and he just wants something he can understand. 

Harrington’s first hit pops him right in the nose, gets the blood vessels going like same-shit-different-day, cinema perfect, all wallop and sound.

 _God_. He’s going to cry - can’t ever seem to help it. It fucking stings in a way that’s connected to his defective tear ducts. Even the most perfunctory of hard-handed slaps from his dad can get him going, especially if there’s an audience. He can already taste his own blood and feel the burn of tears in his eyes, the fearful murmuring of those weird kids as loud as a rocket in his ears. They were all cheering a moment ago - except for Max. She knows better.

Harrington is pushing his ridiculous prom-king hair out of his face, having that quiet moment of realization that he’s started something altogether more dangerous than what he’d pictured in his little hero fantasy, that he hasn’t got the juice for what Billy can take, that Billy is going to make them both play this thing out ugly. He'd figured Harrington was dumb as a bag of hammers, but the guy’s actually surprisingly composed, using the diminishing moment of entropy before one of them swings to size Billy up to put him down, eyes dark and intuitive.

Huh. Selective intelligence, he guesses.

But there’s something else there too.

Billy could just be imagining things. He did just take a direct hit to the face after all. But there’s something about Harrington, some barely perceptible shift from trying on a role, to something more familiar. Something that’s been kept sleeping. Billy can sense it like a snake tasting the air: Harrington is _awake_ now. Almost...eager. Like he needs this fight too. 

The thought of it is so absurd it’s hysterical. Has this choked-up exhausted laughter coming out of him. He was supposed to go on a date tonight, sink a few beers, maybe get lucky. But instead he’s here, in this crackpot house, with these weirdo middle schoolers, and finally, _finally_ , he’s getting a glimpse at the guy who might have been king.

“Get out,” Harrington says, voice heavy with contempt; touches two fingers to his chest.

It’s ballsy. Suicidal. It’s more than Billy could have ever hoped for.

Harrington presses and Billy lets himself be pressed, feeling the slow unfurling of violence inside him, the weight of his arms, the thudding of his pulse in his ears. There’s a silence between them, sparking with anticipation, as magnetic as a kiss.

He sincerely hopes Harrington doesn’t plant his feet for this one, because he’s going to want to roll with it.

It’s a fast swing, hard enough to take teeth out. He doesn’t bother disguising the throw and, of course, Harrington ducks, fast and graceful, coming through with some of that agility that makes him such a vexing defensive player. Then he’s up and punching Billy in the mouth, and again across the jaw; meaner now that he knows he has to put Billy down.

The third hit hurts just right, gets him tasting his own blood over his teeth, shorts him out, everything else falling away to white-noise. Harrington getting laid out now is just an inevitability. He can keep dodging or he can take his licks early - Billy’s not going to be able to stop until he’s _pulp_.

Ultimately Harrington goes belly-up without much of a fuss, cradling his head like he’s still trapped in the moment of a plate breaking over it. Billy barely sees him. Can’t hear a thing over the rush of adrenaline. He’ll remember details later: the drawn-out hurt sound Harrington couldn’t control; the way he’d staggered, tried to draw away out of Billy’s grip, instinctively afraid to get hit again; the limp roll of his head side to side and the slick spill of blood as his lip split open.

The unexpected sting of the needle.

Max. It’s better than being high, whatever she's just stuck him with. He stumbles to his feet, the world turning syrupy in the time it takes to pull the syringe out of his neck, the ground tilting out from under him just as soon as he tries to step forward.

Yeah, this is definitely cheating.

Max is saying something, angry, suddenly taller than him – over him? – the colors of her hair and face bleeding together like a smeared oil painting. Billy’s mouth is cotton candy. He can’t hear her, is too busy melting down to particles to reply.

Then he’s underwater.

^^^

Once, Billy’s mom took him out of school so they could go to the beach. He doesn’t remember much about it, except for the anxious feeling of looking back to shore every so often, afraid she wouldn’t be able to see him so far out, and the sucking blackness of the current that pulled him under for a full minute.

He’s in that blackness now, one moment sinking, rolling, breathing water and then - jerking awake - Max slamming a bat full of nails between his legs, but then he blinks and—

Nothing.

He’s alone, the smack of the bat on the floorboards just an echo in his brain.

It takes him a long slew of moments to remember where he is, flat on his back, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, thoughts coalescing inside his aching skull. He has no idea how long he’s been out for but it’s long enough that his body is stiff with cold, the front door of the Byers’ house left wide open, paper sliding over the floor like dead leaves.

He’d registered that the place was a dump when he first pushed his way in. Beat-up furniture, busted window and glass on the floor, the psych-ward drawings taped up everywhere – the Wheeler woman hadn’t given him the half of it. But now that he’s actually looking around the place is downright fucking creepy. No way in hell he’s ever coming back here, or Max either, once this gets back to Neil.

He picks himself up, scrubbing at the blood crusted under his nose and testing his jaw while he waits for his half-frozen legs to cooperate. His face is throbbing and numb so he heads for the kitchen.

This shithole better have ice.

His hand is on the fridge door before he realizes he’s standing amidst the wreckage of all its scattered contents. Shelves and soggy ready-meals, and something spilled and slimy. Something fucking stinks. He scoops up a half-defrosted bag of peas, pressing it to his lip and then dropping it when he realizes the bag is more wet than cold. Peas explode everywhere, skittering over the floorboards, over the swathes of scribbled-on paper.

Jonathan Byers. Billy had dismissed him as just some inconsequential loner type too cliché to warrant his attention – a fact which they’d both used to their advantage, sharing the occasional lunch break in the school dark room, mutually disinterested in each other. When Billy next sees him they’re going to have a little chat. Anyone living in this level of fucked up has layers.

Well, there’s no ice, and no food that Billy is interested in eating if the smell of rot coming off the fridge is any indicator. He’s wasted enough time here and he’s still not sure what his next move should be. When he steps out on the porch he’s half-expecting to see a police car, or Neil’s truck maybe. But there’s nothing. He's already patting his pocket for his keys before he even truly processes just how much nothing he’s seeing.

Bitch, he thinks.

 _Bitch_.

His stomach goes cold and hollow at the shock of it – can barely process that she would dare. If Max thinks her little show of assertiveness is going to survive the night and letting Steve Harrington take his car out for a joy ride then she has another thing coming. Even his dad has never touched his car. It’s one of the few things they both respect.

God, his dad is really gonna let him have it over this. Losing Max and now the Camaro, and losing a fight too. He doubts Neil will be too keen to hear Billy’s interpretation on that one.

He smokes two cigarettes on the porch delaying the inevitable. He can probably make it home in under an hour. The Byers are a little further out from the poor end of town but not too far from Cherry, and on foot there are some woods he can cut through.

He sticks his last cigarette in his mouth, jams his hands inside his shirt under his arms to keep them warm, and starts the long walk home.  

^^^

He gets lost almost immediately after running out of smokes. He’s on some street that’s completely black, the street lights browned out. The houses either side of him are dark, people inside already fast asleep. He could go knock on somebody’s door and turn up the charm, maybe even score a lift home, but he honestly doesn’t have a smile left in him, and his face is probably too banged up anyway.

He’s so strung out from the cold that he’s no longer even angry at Maxine. He’s actually kind of impressed that she had the smarts to maroon him, keep him out of the house while she no-doubt spins her own stories to Susan and Neil about where she’s been all night and what Billy’s done. She might be a Mayfair but apparently she’s got the Hargrove spine. 

He has plenty of time to figure out how he feels about this latest sucker punch to his ego on his walk.

When they’d first moved to Hawkins, he’d had this notion in his head that he could get all of the resentment and festering rage out of his system by giving it the reins. His anger was supposed to punish her – _this is_ your _fault - this is the brother you get now –_ and then, after it was spent, he was supposed to be able to forgive her, give her back the Billy she knew from before, like a sort of peace offering.

He’d really thought it would be that simple. Like maybe he’d wake up one day and what happened back in Cali wouldn’t— wouldn’t _hurt_ so bad. Wouldn’t be this wound in him that he couldn’t even look at without feeling so hot-sick-embarrassed it made him want to rip out of his own skin.

The only thing that had made this shitstain excuse for a town bearable was knowing that she was suffering too, just as alone.

But then somehow she just...wasn’t. Against all odds she’d found something in Hawkins that got her out from under the same weight that was suffocating him. She’d made friends. As if Hawkins was her home. As if—

And Billy _wasn’t even allowed to_ —

Billy was just – he swallows around the emotion – left behind, stranded. Empty, as if all the anger he’d let fuel him had hollowed him out, changed the fabric of him.

Timid little Maxine who’d been his burdensome shadow since their parents met, who’d dogged his every step like a hungry stray, cobbling together a personality out of his hobbies and his way of speaking and his music and his clothes. The girl who’d had to sneak into his school cafeteria because she didn’t have anyone else to eat lunch with. 

She hadn’t been waiting around for his forgiveness.

She’d cut her losses.

The realization had only truly dawned on him once he was looking at her open window himself, needing proof, the night air ruffling the curtains, cool on his stinging cheek, brain swimming with the knowledge that she’d fucked him over so spectacularly. Again. “We can’t find Maxine,” Susan had said, the words knocking him off-center, recoloring their conversation. He’d still miscalculated anyway, digging himself in deeper, pissed about being left to babysit, missing the moment when he should have played the penitent son.

Driving up and down half of Hawkins he'd realized how stupid he’d been not to see it happening right under his nose; how he already had a handful of names and places to start looking for her at: Lucas Sinclair, Dustin, Zombie Boy. The kid with the stink-eye... Billy used to sneak out his window too, back when it seemed like there was nothing Neil could do to him that would get in the way of him and a good time with his friends.

He tucks his hands in tighter under his arms and grits his teeth, feeling pretty damn sorry for himself. He doesn’t indulge in the feeling often.

He’s so absorbed in coming up with plausible excuses for his return that he misses the slowing approach of a car, not registering the slice of headlights until tires are crunching over the dirt shoulder beside him.

It’s a cop.

Of course. The cherry-on-top of his shit luck tonight. 

The car pulls up alongside him, rolling to a stop. It’s dark in the cab but he can make out the driver: a gruff-looking older guy – Billy’s specialty.

“Get in, kid.”

“You arresting me?” he drawls, coming a little closer to where heat is spilling out of the cracked passenger window. “Sir,” he adds.

“Sooner or later, I’m sure,” the guy says wearily. “Look. It’s been a long night, just— get in the car would you?”

Billy doesn’t need to be told twice, shoving himself down into the seat and jamming his freezing fingers up against the vents. The cab smells like Camels. The cop leans over and cranks the heat up, eyeballing Billy’s instinctive wariness. He checks the guy’s badge out the corner of his eye.

Police Chief Hopper.

They drive in uncomfortable silence for a couple of blocks.

“I just got done dropping Steve Harrington home with two black eyes he’s going to have to explain to his momma in the morning,” Hopper says, taking his eyes off the road to give Billy a shrewd look. “You know anything about that?”

Billy swallows. Harrington better not have grassed on him. “He told you it was me?”

“No.” The man cocks an eyebrow at his bruised face. “Just thought you looked like matching dance partners is all.” He eyes Billy’s near-open shirt. “There a good reason why you’re walking around at one in the morning without a jacket?”

Billy bares his teeth in the semblance of a grin. “Just looking for the nearest beach.”

Hopper sighs like he can’t be assed pushing the matter. “Okay, smartass. Where’s home then?”

Not fucking here, Billy thinks, giving him an address.

Hopper darts a look at him. “You sure about that?”

“It look like I want to spend another hour walking around freezing my fucking nuts off?”

“Okay, okay. Jesus,” he says, taking the next turn. “Your mother know you got a mouth on you?”

“I don’t know,” Billy deadpans. “Guess I’ll ask her if I ever see her ghost around.”

“Damn, kid, alright. Screw me for trying.” He runs a hand over his face. “Let’s not talk then. That’s just fine.”

Billy doesn’t push his luck by messing with the Chevy’s radio, but it’s a near thing and the drive takes an age, identical garden lawns and mailboxes sliding by his window as they navigate the sleepy suburban sprawl. It gets to him, how dark it gets out here. How quiet. In Hayward there was always someone with a light on, noise from people and cars in the street, televisions blaring away through shared walls. He used to hang a sheet over the top of his ratty curtains to keep out the glare of the streetlamp across from his bedroom window.

In Hawkins there are only stars - not that he’s ever going to take the time to stand around in some cow field to look at them.

Hopper lets him out on the curb without a fuss, so Billy doesn’t play the stroppy teenager either, giving the man a respectful nod once he’s shut the car door, hoping he’ll leave before drawing too much attention from the house.

He doesn’t go in through the front door but cuts around the side, stumbling a little in the darkness, fishing around on the ground for a rock.

It takes three tries before the window opens.

“Carol?” Tommy says blearily, poking his head out, hair stuck up every which way.

“Hi Tommy,” Billy says drily. 

Tommy’s eyes blink properly open. “Oh. Uh...hey…man. What time is it?”

Billy takes an annoyed breath in through his nose. “Look, I need a place to crash. I don’t have time to get into it.”

“Oh,” Tommy says stupidly.

Billy raises his eyebrows after an awkward beat. “So…?”

Tommy frowns. “I mean, my parents are kind of uptight. Is there someone else you can hang with?”

Billy tries not to be disappointed. He sure as hell isn’t going to tell this glorified keg-stand assist he’s the closest thing to a friend Billy has in the whole world. He might not have much but he at least has his reputation.  

“Yeah, sure,” he says, spitting into a rosebush to cover the tightness in his throat. “Catch you around, man.” He starts picking his way back towards the side gate.

“Alright!” Tommy whisper-yells after him. “Jeez, yeah, okay, you can stay the night.”

Releif knots in his chest as he doubles back. Tommy hasn't moved, looking down at Billy, waiting. Billy stares back impatiently, following his gaze down to the sloping corner eave, to the nearby trellis and back to Tommy's stupid expectant face. 

“This isn’t Romeo and Juliet, dumbass,” he hisses. “Get down here and unlock the door for me.”

“Fine! Fine!” Tommy says, shushing him. “Just keep your voice down okay. My dad’s a light sleeper.”

His head finally ducks out of the window but it’s quite a stretch of time before Billy hears him fiddling with the back door, his fingers turning numb in his balled fists. He ushers Billy in like they’re breaking into Fort Knox. As if anyone could hear shit in a house this big, he thinks as they march up the thickly carpeted stairs.

Tommy’s room is in the middle of the upstairs landing. It smells overwhelmingly of socks and something powdery Billy recognizes as Carol’s perfume. There’s a signed basketball jersey on the wall and a cabinet stuffed with little league trophies. It’s so tragically expected that it sucks the last dregs of adrenaline right out of him. Tommy has laid down a comforter at the foot of his bed like it’s a grade school sleepover and Billy’s so thankful he could just buckle onto it.

“Wait here,” Tommy says, disappearing into what Billy’d assumed was a closet but is apparently an ensuite bathroom. Christ. He cringes at the sight of Tommy’s freckly legs sticking out of his boxers when he returns holding out a wet flannel for Billy’s lip. Tommy whistles softly. “Oh man. What did Racy Lacey do to you?”

Billy frowns, taking the flannel. It’s dripping, freezing cold. What a fucking moron. “Huh?”

“Your date? Guess you’re not taking her to prom then.”

Oh. Lacey Fieldman. Carol had set them up, promising Billy she’d be easy. Apparently she used to give out blowjobs under the basketball bleachers between classes. Dammit. What a waste of cologne. He wonders if she’s still awake somewhere, blowing out a candle in the window perhaps, complaining to her diary about him standing her up.

Billy dabs at his lip. Now that he’s out of the cold his face is starting to throb again and there’s a shaky feeling behind his eyes from whatever Max dosed him with. It’s messing with him, making him feel like he’s about to spill his guts right here in Tommy H’s childhood bedroom.

“So who’d you fight?” Tommy asks after a while, eyes flicking over his scraped knuckles.

Royalty, Billy thinks.

“Figure it out yourself Monday.”

Tommy snickers, crawling into his bed and turning the lamp off. Billy is left to crawl onto the comforter on the floor in the dark, his jeans stiff and cold and his belt biting into his hip. They’re both too uneasy around each other to actually sleep, but they lay in silence, letting the warm stillness of the room close in, listening to each other’s careful breathing, until, at some point, Billy must close his eyes.

^^^

Tommy kicks him out early. He gives him a waffle for the road at least, still warm. Billy eats it in four bites, hustled out of bed and down the stairs towards the front door with his boots in hand. He remembers only the vague outline of his dreams, a soup of confused half-memories: Lacey Fieldman waiting for him somewhere under the bleachers; the kaleidoscopic skittering of frozen peas over a kitchen floor; Steve Harrington ducking under his swinging fist, again, again, again…

Tommy is practically bouncing with excitement at getting to sneak Billy out of the house like Billy’s his girlfriend. He keeps bumping their arms together all jock-friendly, leaning in way too close and clapping his hand around Billy’s shoulder. Personal boundaries eroded by one night of poor judgment on Billy’s part. If his mouth wasn’t crammed full of dry waffle he’d tell the guy to push the fuck back.

Tommy pauses at the foot of the stairs, peering around the open entrance where Billy can hear pre-coffee murmuring and the dull clink of cutlery. Tommy waves him past, like _now – quick_. There’s a flash of some woman with her back turned, pink towel robe, cordless phone hunched up under one ear – and then he’s across, pressing up against a row of hanging coats. He bends down to stuff his feet into his shoes. His body, still warm and clumsy from sleep, prickles at the thought of the cold walk ahead of him.

“Tommy, come help me with this bacon please,” Tommy’s dad says from the kitchen, spying his son in the open space between the stairs and the front door. “Your mother’s been called in for a settlement.” 

“Sure, pa,” Tommy says. Fucking lame. He turns his head to mouth, _See you at practice_ at Billy.

Billy gives him an exaggerated thumbs-up he hopes conveys how ambivalent he is towards that prospect – and, as he does so, one of the coats he’s leaned against falls off its hook and onto the floor with a thump.

They both freeze.

“Hold on Jan— Tommy?” a woman’s voice calls from the kitchen. “Who’s there, honey? Did Steve stay over?”

Tommy’s face goes from caught red-handed to hurt to embarrassed inside of a second. Billy doesn’t stick around to see it, grabbing up the coat and sliding out the door before he has to find out any more than he already has. He doesn’t feel sorry for Tommy. Tommy’s about to sit down to a hot breakfast with his Betty Crocker family. What does Billy care if he’s still pining the loss of his friend? Billy’s about to get the strips torn off him. He’ll be lucky if Neil doesn’t make him shave his head again. 

He books it over the lawn, slipping into the coat as he jogs. It’s Tommy’s ugly-ass letterman jacket. Great. Now he probably looks like a prick as well as a vagrant.

The walk home in broad daylight is actually infinitely more uncomfortable than the previous night because of the disturbing amount of Loch Nora residents up bright and early, fetching the paper and pushing lawn mowers around. They watch him with suspicion as he walks by, a garish stranger cutting through their cookie-cutter scenery, arms tense at his sides. He’s so focused on not making eye contact with anybody he walks right into the path of a sprinkler, the looping spray soaking the bottom of his jeans.

By the time he makes it home his head is pounding again, a headache settling like a band around his temples, his mouth dry and metallic. He stalks right past the Camaro parked neatly on the verge, taking note of the dented front, the side scraped down to the metal - nothing he can’t fix. Neil will probably relish the opportunity to get some quality father-son time out of it. Just about the only thing they have in common is a knack for fixing cars (and breaking things).

It’s actually a shock that his dad isn’t being his usual huge asshole self and waiting for him in the doorway, but a quick scan of the driveway reveals his truck is gone, and the house is locked and empty. He fishes out the spare key Susan keeps under an ugly ceramic frog and lets himself in.

The first thing he does is strip off and head straight for the shower. There’s still hot water for once and he lingers, letting it stream over him, washing the itch out of his hair, stinging over his bruised face. It’s the first shower he’s had in forever without someone waiting in line or banging on the door for him to hurry up. It seems like a wasted opportunity not to jerk off, but he’s so wrung out and fried, and he knows better than to touch himself under Neil’s roof. He grabs the closest bottle – Susan’s herbal shampoo – and uses it to lather up, rinsing once he’s clean and the warm water has soothed the worst of the cold ache out of him.

He pads over to the sink with a towel wrapped around his waist to assess his reflection in the streaky mirror. His face isn’t half bad. There’s a splotch on his neck where Max stuck him with the syringe, and a dark bruise with a livid center on his jaw – nothing he needs to put iodine on. His eyes are bloodshot. He rakes a comb through his hair, thinking of those weird drawings again and the bitter look Tommy hadn’t even slightly been able to cover. He presses a finger to his chest under his pendant. He heals fast. In a week it will be like no one ever touched him.

When he finally comes out of the bathroom his dad is waiting for him, standing in the kitchen. He puts Billy’s keys down on the counter, next to Susan’s simmering pot-roast.

“Maxine came home at midnight last night,” he says.

Billy swallows, his grip tensing up around the knot of his towel. He can hear Max and Susan outside, Max whingeing, car doors slamming, getting groceries out of the car.

“Do you want to tell me where she was?”

It’s the same tactic as the cop had used: rope to hang himself with – except that it’s completely different stakes. Except that his dad wants him to lose. He’s watching Billy, jaw not ticking yet, but tense, waiting for Billy to make it easy for him to take the mask off.

Billy has no idea what line Max has already fed him about her disappearing act or how well their stories will line up. He has to think Maxine wouldn’t have told Neil about Sinclair, or stealing the car, or the bat full of nails. He still doesn’t know himself where she snuck off to before ending up at that creepy house. Or where she went after. Not that any of that really matters to his dad anyway, he couldn’t give less of a shit about where Max’s been – that’s just a show for Susan. No, it’s going to be about Billy not getting Maxine home himself, about failing his bullshit test.

“I’m waiting, Bill,” his dad says.

Billy licks his lips. “She was with her friends. I found her at the Byers’ place – off Cornwallis,” he adds lamely.

“She told us you got into a fight” – _and didn’t win it_ , hangs unspoken in the air. 

“So what?” he huffs. “I found her with some creep, dad. Some senior from school. What the hell else was I supposed to do?”

His dad raises his eyebrows at his tone. “You telling me you don’t how to handle yourself without acting like some rabid animal, is that what you’re saying?” 

“She got home didn’t she?”

“She got _home_ , in some stranger’s car, after her mother was up the whole night, worried sick—”

“That’s her problem!” Billy says, voice coming out whiny and juvenile like it always does when he gets into it with his father. “It’s not my fault her kid wants to run around town with a bunch of freaks.”

“And her disappearing on your watch? You think that’s not your fault either? How do you think that looks? Like I can’t teach my own kid some basic damn responsibility.” He pauses, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “You know, I try and I try and I try with you, Billy. I give you every opportunity to prove to me you deserve to be a part of this family—”

Billy swallows. “Yeah, well I—”

“And all I ask is that you don’t embarrass me,” he says, voice gone quiet and dangerous. “All I ask is that you respect the rules of this house, respect that woman out there who is doing her best to raise you right, like you’re her own son.”

That’s laughable. Susan’s not his mother – not even close. His mother was a spitfire, a lousy cook. She had a laugh like a chainsaw.

Susan is just a fixture in his life, a piece of furniture. It makes Billy sneer, thinking of her waiting up in her slippers and hair rollers, acting as if Maxine’s some spoiled little doll who’s never run off before.

“Well maybe she should focus on raising her own kid right first.”

“Wrong answer,” Neil says.   

“Well, what do you _want_ me to say?”

Neil looks at him, disbelieving. “Say? I don’t want you to _say_ anything. I want you to _act_ like a man.” He leans in, eyes sliding over him slow and disdainful. “But that’s too much to ask of you, isn’t it, Bill.”

Billy’s heart squeezes in his chest. Neil’s insults never miss, he’s learned over the years what really gets under Billy’s skin. But even he draws the line at certain topics. They’ve both been so careful, stitched the memory of that last night in Hayward up so tight it’s like it never happened. Neil had wanted it that way too, and now he’s ripping off the scab, making them both acknowledge things that are best left alone. Like he can smell it all over Billy again. Like Billy’s slipped up somehow, and he _hasn’t_.

“Dad, I—”

He’s interrupted by Max bursting through the door, her arms full of bags.

“—never does chores and—Billy!”

She seems surprised to see him. Had she counted on him being smart enough to stay away? Her eyes dart between him and Neil, the tense space between them, her sharp little mind working as Susan bustles in behind her.

“What’s—oh,” Susan says. At the sight of him, her face goes tight and pale. “Hello, Billy.”  She makes to close the door behind her and then seems to reconsider. “Maxine, I think we left something—"

Nice try, lady, Billy thinks bitterly. He’s learned not to expect much from her in terms of running interference. What little motherly backbone she has is exclusively for Max.

“No, Susan, let her see,” Neil says, not looking away from him. “It’s about time she learns.”

Billy feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. He hadn’t predicted this. Somehow this has gone wrong, just like the argument last night, sliding into more dangerous territory. Neil almost never gets hands-on when his step-daughter is in the house. It’s like Billy’s North Star for how much he can get away with, whether he should brace for impact.

His dad is watching him carefully, waiting to see how he processes this development, if there’s something there he can use.

Susan frowns, putting her groceries down. “Can we talk about this first?”

“You want her to start running wild, with boys?” Neil scoffs. “You said it yourself, she needs to start thinking about how her behavior looks now that she’s a woman.”

“Mom!” Max hisses, turning furious red.

Oh _Jesus_. Now he wishes he’d choked on his own saliva and died on the Byers’ floor.

“Neil,” Susan says, wringing her hands, “She’s still tired from last night—”

“No,” Neil’s says, tone firm. “You want him embarrassing us again? Here, in this nice town? You want him teaching her his goddamn… _aberrant_ behaviors, like that’s some way to act?” His nostrils flare. “It might take longer to stick with Billy, but it’s not too late for her. You’ve got to get them early, that was my mistake. I should have stepped in before Roxanne let him turn out—”

“My mom would—” Billy starts, but cuts himself off, biting his tongue.

Neil’s eyes light up with cunning understanding. “Your mom would what, Billy? Something you want to add?”

“No,” Billy says through grit teeth. 

“‘No,’ what?” 

“No – I fucking said no!” he yells.

Neil shoves him, hard, sends him slipping all over the floor, trying to keep his towel up, his hip clipping the table. Max gasps and Susan says something low and urgent to her.

“So now you want to be tough?” his dad asks, shoving him again while he knows Billy can’t get his voice to come out right, getting all up in Billy’s face the way he knows Billy hates. “You a tough guy, huh, Billy?”

It’s like a goddamn magic trick, that combination. Billy locks his jaw, trying to keep a lid on it, but his eyes are already burning, Neil’s big square face blurring out of focus. He’d rather Neil put him through a wall than anyone see him like this.

Of course, Neil knows that too.

There really is something wrong with Billy. Maybe his mom really did raise him too soft or he’s too much of a sissy or something, and Neil knows that he doesn’t want to be, and this is his way of reminding him that he is – the slaps and shoves, they're just the most expedient way of getting there. He knows the part Billy really hates is the part immediately after, when he’s exposed and squirming, when the delusions he’s bought about himself are peeled away. 

He glances at the doorway and, yes, they’ve both seen already. Susan is looking at the ground like she always does, and Maxine – Maxine is looking at him like she doesn’t know what she’s seeing exactly. He can feel his ears turning red, a sick tumbling feeling in his chest.

Neil’s eyes track the suppressed line of Billy’s mouth, trembling at the corners, his balled, useless hands. Whatever he sees is enough to satisfy him. _Fuck you_ , Billy thinks, but he keeps his mouth shut, blisteringly aware that he’s about to cry, that there are always more humiliating parts of him that Neil can dig up and use.

“Remember this next time you want to play big man,” Neil says. “You just remember what you’re made of.” He turns away, dismissive, done. “Now, go put a shirt on. You’re dripping all over Susan’s clean floor.”

^^^

It was Tommy’s jacket.

That’s what set Neil off, he realizes, after, closing the door to his bedroom softly behind him and sinking against it. He bites into the side of his hand instead of screaming. It just gets so tangled up inside him, all the things he wants to say, all the ways he’s imagined he could win, could make Neil feel small instead. Neil’s right. They do this dance again and again and again and it never sticks.

Tommy’s stupid letterman jacket, so ostentatiously obviously _not Billy’s_. He’d left it strewn on top of his clothes when he went to take a shower. Fucking careless. It even smells like something else. Tommy’s aftershave, something clean and woodsy, something a mom would keep throwing in her cart at the supermarket. It makes his skin crawl to think of Neil in here looking at it, picking it up, listening to Billy in the shower.

He shudders.

It’s coming up to the surface again.

He'd thought it was gone. But here it comes, out from under the wave, legs beating against the bottomless darkness, weightless, striving for air.

He needs to find a way to drown it.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos/comments are so so appreciated! Please give me the mental stamina to get Billy to at least some over the pants action.


	2. can't hunt, can't sing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys!!! Thank you so much for all your comments. I have so much love for this fandom already.

 

Harrington isn’t at school on Monday. Billy knows this because he takes the guy’s parking spot.

His ears are still buzzing with Max’s words when he pulls into the lot. She’s talking to him now. _Really_  talking. Who knew little Maxine Mayfair had such a big mouth on her. For as long as he’s known her she’s mostly kept her thoughts to herself. Typical latchkey kid, like Billy, not used to playing with others. Now that she’s not so afraid of him – now that she thinks she has something over him – she talks, all the damn time.

She rifles through his glove box while she’s at it too, playing with crumpled up cigarette cartons, fucking with his tapes. Neil has the keys to his car and Billy doesn’t keep shit in there that he doesn’t want found but it still pisses him off, the easy way she does it, unhesitating, like no one ever told her she couldn’t just _do_ whatever the hell she wants. He should call her out for being nosey but he lets it go because he can recognize an olive branch when he sees one, and because he’s bored of his own sulk.

She avoids him most of Sunday, picking up on the lines of tension between him and Neil, walking around on eggshells in a way so like her mother that it makes Billy want to bark at her. By the time he’s pulled himself together and resurfaced from his room his dad has cooled off enough to serve him the usual line of hardass bullshit:

No missing curfew. No partying. No missing family dinner.

No lip.

So rote it’s almost comforting. Billy bucks just enough that Neil knows he’s still got a red-blooded son, and Neil lets Billy keep his car so that he can stay out of the house and chase skirt.

Neither of them are fooled that Billy will follow this latest regime for long. Neil doesn’t care about half of his rules anyway, they’re just things he thinks Susan would want. The upshot of this one is that he’s basically got to chaperone Max wherever her heart desires and keep any boys from getting at her.

And, no more allowance.

Billy had got his back up about that. Neil had told him zip it unless he wanted another lesson in manners. Then they’d gone down to fix his car.

Clearly the subtleties of their father-son relationship were lost on Max. She hovers the whole time, watching them anxiously while they work, circling on her skateboard at a wary distance until her mother calls her in. Even then he catches her watching from the window, her face a pale, worried smear.

She doesn’t get it. How could she? For both of them, cars are simpler. They do what they’re supposed to. They break and you can fix them.

And Neil might hate everything about Billy from his boots to his hairspray, but Billy’s a dark horse runner for Son of the Year when he’s working with cars. A real ‘chip off the old block’.

He’d been a hyper little shit when they first started living together and Neil’d figured out pretty quick he was best put to pulling things apart and putting them back together again – that and team sports. Baseball was Neil’s game, but Billy didn’t play all that nice with other little leaguers who got in the way of him and his time in the batting box, so basketball had been the next best thing they found that could tucker him out. Basketball is where all his anger goes, but fixing cars is the balm he needs for his restless mind and hands.

The damage to the Camaro isn’t all that complicated. Neil shows him how to pull out the dent with boiling water and a bucket and makes approving grunts while Billy gets his hands dirty, occasionally reminding Billy to stick his damned tongue back in his mouth when he concentrates too hard. 

They set up a workhorse with sandpaper and primer for the scratches and his dad even brings out the radio, even though Billy isn’t allowed to touch it and Neil won’t listen to anything but classic rock. They have a good rhythm going, so after the scratches are buffed out and painted Billy pops the hood and goes about giving the girl an oil change too.

The weather is just starting to turn when they finish up, his fingers feeling the bite of the cold and his bruised nose starting to sting. Neil leaves him to do the rest on his own.

Billy expects the inside of the car to be a wreck – wouldn’t put it past Maxine to leave roadkill in there or something, but when he finally looks inside the cab it’s sparkling clean, the upholstery smelling faintly of chemicals and the half-dozen air fresheners dangling from the rearview mirror. His leather jacket is folded neatly in the passenger-side footwell. He runs his hands over the dash and the seatback and sits down.

Clean.

It’s such a stroke of good fortune, so unexpectedly considerate of her it’s got him stumped. His best guess is one of the geek squad shat themselves in his car.

He wants to ask, but he also kind of doesn’t want to know, and so far Max has been smart enough not to talk about that night or anything related to what she saw in the kitchen. Mostly what she wants to yap about is some girl who doesn’t want to be her friend – shocker – and the new mall half a town over. Susan’s promised to take her there to buy a new swimsuit for her Christmas present. And a new skateboard, since Billy snapped the last. And a pool. And does Billy think Neil will let them get a pool if he gets a raise? There’s room out the front and he won’t have to set it up, she’ll build it herself. Yeah, Billy thinks, dad’s real tight with money but he’ll definitely fork out for a goddamn pool so you and Sinclair can splash around in his front yard for all the world to see.

He about gnaws his thumb off trying to keep himself from cranking the radio up over her while she chatters, focusing instead on the long colorless stretch of road, jonesing for a cigarette. Then it really registers what she’s saying.

Summer. She’s talking like they’re still going to be here, in Hawkins, _come summer_.

The thought fills him with dread. Max might be drinking the Kool-Aid already but Billy hasn’t got the stamina to make it in Hawkins that long.

He’s still thinking about it when he pulls into Max’s school, waiting for her to kick herself out. He’s pissed her off somehow even though he didn’t speed or blast his music or even open his damn mouth. She shoves the door open and gets out, turning to glare at him.

“You have to try too, you know.”

Then she slams the door, because she’s thirteen.

He watches her with dull interest as she hurries across the lot to meet up with her friends. He didn’t think they’d be there waiting for her - at least not out in the open. Thought they’d at least hide if they heard him coming. They’re brave little assholes. Oddballs. She fits right in, doesn’t even turn around to see him leave.

They’d moved around enough times back in Cali that he’s got the new kid act down to a fine art. Make a big splash, smile at the right girls, get to the top of the ladder as fast and as brutally as possible so that the rest of it is handed to him on a platter. Not worth trying to get known by anybody, just give them the broad strokes and they’ll paint a picture of him that’s true enough anyway. He’s a closed book for a reason: he’s a dick. No question where he gets that from. Neil could only fool people for so long too, until Susan. That’s why they were always moving, his dad always running out the clock, shuffling their lives around a new girlfriend or a new job.

Hawkins is no different. The kids here are the same as anywhere really, just more inbred, hungrier for something shiny and new. It’s easy enough to enjoy what they want so badly to give him. Attention, jealousy, invites to parties with free booze and girls who think he can be gentle. But the shine always wears off Billy Hargrove eventually. Girls get wise. Guys get sick of his party tricks. Someone will start a rumor and no one will know enough about him or give enough of a shit to counter it.

Except, usually by the time the wheels start falling off they’re already packing up to leave town. It changes things, knowing that he might not be able to cut and run this time.

Jesus Christ, does he _live_ here now?

He’s still so distracted thinking about it when he pulls into the school that he almost runs Lacey Fieldman over with his car.

She’s standing in the middle of his usual spot with an extra big scrunchie in her hair and an extra pissed-off look on her face. Her arms are crossed, so, not a happy diary entry then. Definitely something he’s not dealing with before his first smoke of the day. He brakes with a start and slams on the reverse, wheeling out in a flurry of grit that sends a couple of loiterers scrambling, and pulling into the seniors’ end of the student bay instead.

There’s only one spot left, prime real estate – a straight shot to the school entrance –  and so deliberately left empty it might as well have a plaque in front of it.

Fuck it, he thinks, turning in with a flourish. He’s taken Steve Harrington’s throne, he might as well take his parking spot too.

The bank of girls who usually line up for a glimpse at Harrington’s panty-dropper of a car seem taken aback by the Camaro, but they warm up to one of his smiles as he struts past. So maybe he hasn’t burnt all his bridges in Hawkins just yet.

^^^

Nancy Wheeler is skipping first period. It’s not something he would normally notice; she’s not his type. She always has a pinched look about her that gets worse when Billy’s around, for one thing. It’s an expression he’s come to expect from girls with glasses and headgear, the ones that think they can get his attention by glaring at him, fantasizing about the day he’s forced to seek them out for math tutoring. But on Wheeler he thinks it might just mean she hates his guts. Maybe because he drunkenly made a pass at her at some party when she’d had punch all down her front and seemed like a good time, or maybe because she thinks he’s the one who keeps flicking staples into her backpack during English.

Rumor is she’s Harrington’s girlfriend and if that’s true then Harrington is even stupider than he’d thought. Wheeler is boring. Certified uptight. She’s the type of girl who’ll only suck dick after marriage, and even then only once the kids have grown up and moved out. She’s a waste of the bimmer’s probably gorgeous backseat.

It’s because she sits in front of him in English that he notices her missing. That and because the moment the teacher starts giving out last week’s poetry assignments he projects himself right back into his car, chin in his hand, following the thought out the window, and sees her pacing around outside.

She’s clutching her books to her chest in a way that’s distinctly anxious. Waiting for someone. She’s cute, he guesses – if you’re into that kind of thing. Delicate-looking. Bird-boned and pretty. Too much work, he thinks idly. Maybe Harrington likes that. Billy prefers easy. Girls who are fun, or girls who are fun to wind up at least.

“—Billy... _Mr. Hargrove_.”

He looks up at that. Mrs. Wright, staring down at him with an exasperated set to her jowls. A few of his classmates have turned around to watch the spectacle. “Can I take it from your faraway expression that you’re considering how the school parking lot might be a microcosm for themes of savagery and civilization? Care to share?”

He gives her a tight look that says, not really, slumping back in his chair.

“Perhaps you’d like to read your poem to the class then,” she says, putting his homework down on his desk. There’s a large red D scrawled at the top of his cribbed Metallica lyrics. She’s really stiffed him. “No?” she continues. “Then maybe you’d like to lend your voice to a part in the assigned reading.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until Wheeler’s here?” he says. “Pretty sure she’ll want to do all the parts.”

Someone giggles at that. It’s some big repeat-year guy who could give Tommy H a run for Hawkins’ dumbest student. Billy’s never been interested in playing class clown, certainly not to a bunch of hicks, but she’s backed him into a corner here. He has no idea what book he’s supposed to have preread.

A girl at the front of the room turns around just slightly, pointing her chin towards a large fake seashell on the teacher’s desk. Billy squints at her. She blows out an irritated sigh and then lifts up her own novel, flashing him the cover: _Lord of the Flies._ Well, that’s easy. He’s already studied it, back in Cali. Not that he can remember a thing about it, but at least there are no girls on the island. He won’t have to read a chick’s part.

“Ok, I’ll do a part,” he says, giving the teacher his most charming smile. Her eyes narrow doubtfully but she’s interrupted by Nancy Wheeler hurrying into the classroom and taking her seat with an apologetic look, stripping out of her fussy little jacket.

“Thank you for joining us, Nancy. We were just assigning speaking parts. You’ll be pleased to learn Billy’s volunteered his talents for one of the central characters.” He tries not to scowl. He’d had his heart set on the pig’s head (or one of the flies). “So who will it be then?” she continues. “The side of democracy or dictatorship? Rules-based society or law of the jungle, or intellect in the face of—”

“Uh, not the fat one,” Billy says. “The cool one – the leader.”

Wheeler turns around in her seat to give him an icy look. “Well, one could argue that that’s Jack,” she says.

Billy snaps his fingers at her like, got it in one.

“It’s decided then,” Mrs. Wright says with an appreciative glance at Wheeler, placing a bent copy of the text in front of him. “Everyone open to page one.”

“Hey.” It’s the big guy, leaning over to pat Billy’s arm. “Good choice, man. Hunt and kill.”

“Yeah, sure,” Billy says neutrally, trying not to shake his hand off. “Hunt and kill.”

^^^

Harrington isn’t at basketball practice the next day either. Coach Green eyes Billy’s scraped knuckles with suspicion as he does his warm up with the rest of the team, but otherwise doesn’t call him out.

Billy hasn’t said a word about the fight. He wants to say it’s because he’s above all the petty high-school gossip, but realistically that would only work in his favor. No, if he’s being honest it’s because he’s slightly nervous about the stories he’s heard about the Harrington family lawyer, Mrs. Harrington. Guy with a face like that probably has it insured for a hundred thousand dollars.

Without Harrington at practice to get his long legs in Billy’s way, Billy breaks out some of his best game of the year. They cycle through one-on-one pairs at first, then skins on shirts once they’re all fired up. Most of the guys love playing against Billy. He’s something new; a challenge they haven’t had for most of their sad little school careers. Coach puts him up against the junior guys to get them up to speed, and against some of the bigger more physical guys to get them playing serious ball. 

Not every guy on the team is someone he can or should antagonize. Parker is too slow-blooded; impossible to bait. He responds to Billy’s nastier elbows by going placid, giving him a measuredly patronizing amount of space. When Billy takes trick shots on him he eyes the clock, like he’s impatient for another partner.

On the other end of the spectrum are the guys like Miller, desperate for their turn at him but so easy to tangle up and trip with a little bit of offensive footwork that Coach usually blasts his whistle before Billy can really get any satisfaction out of them.

The only one of them who would make it on a team back home is Tommy, who might be an idiot and a loudmouth, but was apparently born to read a play. He fits into Billy’s game so seamlessly it’s like passing back and forth with his own shadow on a wall. He’s everywhere Billy needs him to be to cut in and make shots, one after the other, blowing through guards and into the key, zig-zagging up the center until the guys playing shirts are red in the face.

He guns up and down the court so fast and unimpeded it’s a joke, until his opponents are hanging back more and more. Until they’re not even really there with him at all. No one in front of him. No contact. Just Tommy, every time he turns to look, coming through with the assist.

They bring in one of the fresh guys from the bench to get some height on him but Billy charges him down, gets him fouled up in his own feet so he can take a sexy lay-up right under the hoop just to really kill morale.

The shriek of Coach’s whistle comes like a mercy blow, the ball from his last shot thudding away on the floor. Someone is dry-retching.

“Alright, alright, we get it, Hargrove, you’re a real star,” Coach says drily. “Hastings! Get over here!” Some of the guys snicker as Tommy lopes over. “You want to hold the ball yourself one day, son?” he hears the man say, not un-affectionately.

Billy wipes sweat out of his eyes. The kid Billy just mowed down is still on his ass, staring up at him like he’s a golden god but he doesn’t stick around to help him up, intent on getting in and out of the showers as quick as he can, before he has to listen to Tommy blowing smoke up his ass about how he should go pro.

Tommy catches up with him anyway just as he’s stepping out of the steam, obstructing Billy’s exit with his big pale body to engage him in a full-blown conversation while they’re both naked, like that’s normal. Billy gives him an irritated look, but apparently Tommy’s used up his smarts for the day because he doesn’t move, almost…deliberately blocks him. Maybe Billy is just paranoid. Locker rooms like this get him feeling claustrophobic, thrown in with a bunch of guys who all grew up looking at each others’ dicks. The smell of sweat and too much deodorant sets him on edge.

“So, is it true?” Tommy asks, smiling.

“Back off,” he says, not caring that it comes out harsh, echoing off the orange tile. Despite past (disastrous) lapses of judgment, Billy has a rule about not talking in the showers. Every time he does he regrets it. He has something defective between his brain and his mouth when he’s pumped up and cocky, something that makes him take risks, say shit he shouldn’t – shit that could be misinterpreted. He doesn’t need to be testing the waters like that here, especially not if he’s staying.

“Is what true?” Miller asks, walking past with a towel over his shoulder.

“That your mom’s giving out handjobs in front of the Big Buy,” Tommy wisecracks, garnering a few whistles.  

“Har-har.”

Billy uses the distraction to step around him, making a beeline for his locker. Most of the guys have started to filter in, stripping out of their uniforms and trading shampoo. Billy shoves his soap back in its plastic dish and throws it in his locker. To his dismay, Tommy has followed him.

“Man, put a towel on,” one of the guys moans.

Tommy leans closer, eyes big and serious as Billy towels off and steps into his jeans. “Coach wanted to know if I thought you’d run for team captain next year. Did you hear?” He licks his lips excitedly. “Harrington’s chickened out – he’s not playing for the rest of the season.”

Billy pauses in the middle of scrubbing his hair dry. Coach Green must really be reaching if he thinks Billy is made up of what it takes to hold a team this lousy together. He hasn’t even bothered to learn half their names. But then again, if he’s stuck in this shitheap until he either graduates or saves enough to get out, maybe having team captain as a feather in his cap isn’t such a bad idea. He could even work it into a scholarship, maybe, so long as it doesn’t come with a bunch of small print. And the title of basketball captain comes with perks, probably has more longevity to it than keg king too.

The guys he plays with respect his skills, but he’s pretty sure most of them think he’s a douchebag. It’s not like he hangs out with them outside of practice, or goes to their preppy little team dinners. If he were to make a grab at team captain it might be a worthwhile way to pass the time. What are his other options here anyway? He’s not going to run for valedictorian as long as Nancy Wheeler and the stick up her ass live and breathe.

Tommy interrupts his thoughts, waving a hand under his face. “So?” He looks pointedly at Billy’s knuckles. “Was it Harrington? Did you teach that loser a lesson?”

“What do you think,” he says, just to get him off his back.

“Holy shit.” It’s the kid he knocked over on the court. Peterson. “You beat up Steve?”

“Guy never could take a hit,” Miller says. “Remember when Lacey’s dad caught them at it and chased him down the street?”

“Remember when he cried because Tommy K tagged him in the jewels with a softball?”

Billy tries not to roll his eyes. He’s not exactly proud of losing his shit on Harrington’s face now that there’s a good chance it might come back around to bite him in the ass, but it also stinks to know it wasn’t even that much of an accomplishment, burying a guy who was already on the way down.

His first week in Hawkins it was all anyone seemed to want to talk about. King Steve. Prom king, star athlete, a good time; a real crowd pleaser, like apple goddamn pie. He’d even sniffed Harrington out before they were introduced. But his instincts had been wrong, or maybe he’d just been too blitzed on shitty beer. Harrington wasn’t apple pie at all. He was like a mouthful of store-bought birthday cake, bland and dried out under the frosting. The closest to interesting Billy’s seen from him was when he was selling himself and those kids a lie, pretending he didn’t want to lay into Billy just to see if he had the balls to. But that had been just an afterimage; a glimpse of something already snuffed out and gone.

He accepts their slaps on the back and their high fives anyway, laughs it up at their lame ‘the king is dead, long live the king’ jokes. He even breaks his no talking rule to set the record straight: He caught Harrington with his kid sister – yeah, in the Byers’ house of horrors. No idea what they were doing but dude wasn’t right and Billy had to show him how to be.

Some of them don’t buy it, but the others – the guys who are still pissed off about all the tail they missed because of Harrington, it gets their respect. Suddenly he’s inside one of their stories, instead of just listening in.

It really isn’t...bad.

“So, you coming out with us Friday?” Tommy asks. “Whole team’s going to the movies, and Lacey will be there. She’s on a mission, you know. You’re probably the only guy in the tri-state area she hasn’t got her mouth on yet.”

“Can’t,” Billy grunts. “Gotta pick Max up from school - family dinner.” It’s the truth. He’s not that put out about it though. It’s not like he has the money to waste on some shitty movie Hawkins is probably the last town in America to get.

“Man,” one guy chimes in. “How have you not gotten any action from Racy Lacey already? Even Peterson’s been with her and he’s got a pindick.”

Peterson squeaks, going bright red. “Fuck you, Danny.”

“Hey,” Tommy says, throwing an arm over Billy’s shoulders, loving the chance to come to his defense even though Billy couldn’t care less. “You should be thanking this guy here. So long as Lacey keeps him busy there’s some left for the rest of you losers.”

Billy shoves him off. This kind of talk – guys squabbling over pussy they’ll probably never get anyway – bores the shit out of him. It’s always the same, in any locker room he’s ever been in; a complete minefield, exactly why he needs to keep his mouth shut and stay out of trouble. But he can’t be too quiet either, he’s learned. They’re all looking at him expectantly now.

“Maybe I’m saving myself for marriage,” he says.

“Yeah,” Tommy says, snorting, “Tell that to all the girls you’ve screwed already. Like, uh” – he holds up a finger, counting – “Nicole. And Ashley C. And Tiffany.”

“Not what I heard.” It’s Miller, edging into the conversation, eyes gleaming. Billy doesn’t know what it is about the guy but he doesn’t like him. He’s squirrely, too eager: a bottom feeder.

Tommy rolls his eyes. “You’re talking out your ass, dude.”

“Yeah, well my girl said Ashley C keeps a list on the door of the girls’ toilets and Hargrove ain’t on it.”

Billy sneers. “So some bitch is pissed off she didn’t get her turn. What else is new. I’m not gonna waste my time chasing some slut.” He throws his towel in his locker. “The cows here don’t exactly do it for me.”

That gets him a round of heckling, guys offended on behalf of girls they’ve had crushes on since grade school. He laughs it up with them, smirking; tries to brush off the feeling of eyes on him - Parker, watching him carefully from across the room.

“It true about Ashley?” Tommy asks him later when the rest of the team has already left and Billy’s still fixing his hair. “She’s probably just pissed…you know, because you dumped her for Lacey. I could get Carol to set you up on another date.”

Billy doesn’t bother dignifying that with a response. His hair is fucked, completely flat. Serves him right for gabbing it up instead of getting to it when it was still wet.

“Harrington and Lacey had a thing?” he asks instead. He doesn’t even know why he’s curious. Lacey Fieldman and then Nancy Wheeler. He can’t see a connection.

Tommy snorts, fisting either side of his towel and pulling it tight over the back of his neck. “Had a thing?” He gives Billy a sly look, lip curling. “He popped her cherry – told the whole school about how she went crazy on his dick their first date. Her parents had to pull her out of school and ship her off to Kerley County for a term. Not that it did her any good.”

Billy licks his lips. Tommy doesn’t realize it but his tone has gone from excited about raking dirt over his old friend, to something bordering on fond. Billy’s not going to call attention to it, especially when he’s telling stories about Harrington that have a darker, more savory flavor than the usual hero-worship bullshit.

Tommy obviously senses that he’s said something to pique Billy’s interest though, because he keeps talking, all the way out of the gym and across the schoolyard. Billy only listens to half of it. He kind of wishes Hawkins would just forget about Steve Harrington already. If he has to live here now he’d be better off without the ghost of some guy following him around, reminding him of all the ways he needs to measure up.

He tongues at the inside of his lip, where his teeth had cut into the flesh. The rest of his face has already healed but it’s a wound he can’t stop reopening.

^^^

Susan has made polenta for dinner. Billy picks at his, letting it slop back onto the plate and catching Max’s eyes across the table. His dad shovels it into his mouth, expressionless and robotic, the sound of the spoon hitting the plate as steady as a metronome. Billy's mom would make burnt eggs on burnt toast and covered in ketchup, he thinks. She never cared if he wanted dessert first.

“Susan said there was a postcard in the mail today,” Neil says when he’s finished. “From California.”

Billy stiffens. Neil meets his eyes, relaxed as anything. “Returned to sender.”

“Who are you writing to in California?” Max asks, frowning. Susan leans over and smooths a flyaway piece of hair behind one of her ears, eyeing her cooling food pointedly.

“None of your business,” he says. He pushes his plate away. “Am I excused?”

“But you hardly touched your—” 

“Susan," Neil says. "Let him go.”

“I’m done too,” Max says, rising out of her seat.  

Susan grabs her arm to sit her back down. “No, you’re not, young lady. Remember what we talked about? You’re staying to clean dishes.”  

“That’s not fair,” Max whines. “How come Billy doesn’t have to do chores?”

“You are my chore."

“Billy.”

“I got a team thing,” he explains. He needs to get out, right now. There’s a hot squeezing feeling in his throat. He wants to see it – the postcard – even if it’s just to confirm, just to see the stamp. It’s not a good idea. Not with all of them in the house. He needs to get in his car and go somewhere.

His dad nods, watching him.

“That’s not _fair_ ,” Max shouts. “He’s not going out with the team, he’s seeing some _girl_. Everyone at school knows about it. How come I can’t go to the arcade with my friends but Billy’s allowed to do whatever he wants?”

She throws her spoon into her food – polenta and gravy spattering – twisting out of Susan’s grip and storming off. Susan hurries after her, her chair squeaking over the linoleum. A moment later her door slams and he can hear Susan pounding on it. The sound of their caterwauling only strings him tighter. It’s a high-pitched noise he never gets used to.

He goes and grabs his keys. His dad’s still sitting at the table when he gets back. “Your girl…” Neil starts, then seems to change his mind. He takes a sip of his root beer, slow, staring at nothing. “I don’t need to remind you to be careful,” he says. “Nothing you can do if you get one of them pregnant.”

Yeah, Billy thinks hatefully, filling in the blanks. Wouldn’t want a mistake following me for the rest of my life.

He floors the gas the whole way into town, music blasting so loud he can feel the beat rattling his blood. Hawkins whizzes by, dark and uninteresting, bare-limbed trees bleached of color, nothing to look at but the long black streamer of road in front of him. By the time he gets to the cinema he’s got the worst of it out of him, but it’s still there in the agitated trip of his pulse.

The team is still milling around underneath the marquee, waiting for the previews to start. Tommy is there too, bearhugging Carol, trying to lift her off her feet while she tries to hold a bucket of popcorn away from him. And there, off to one side, looking around hopefully and ignoring one of the other guys, is Lacey Fieldman.

She clocks him before anyone else as he pulls up showily, rubber screeching. He doesn’t bother getting out, just leans over to shove the passenger door open.

“Get in,” he says with a dangerous smile. “Ditch the popcorn.”

“Maybe I wanted to see the movie,” she says as she slides into the seat, giving him a sultry look from under her curly bangs.

“I’ll tell you how it ends,” he says. “The princess and the criminal end up together.” It’s the story she wants – they all do – even if it’s not the whole point of the movie. Even if it’s not what she’s going to get out of him, really. 

They don’t speak the rest of the drive out to Lovers’ Lake and he doesn’t let her touch the radio. He can tell he makes her nervous. Not in the way he makes Max nervous, when she holds onto the door handle like he’s a psycho who’s going to get them both killed. More like she had it in her head how the night would go and he’s skipped a few steps, put her on the back foot. 

“So,” she says breathily once they’ve parked somewhere quiet and he’s turned the music off.

The seat creaks as he leans over and kisses her. She sighs into it, going pliant, clicking out of her seatbelt to crawl into his lap. She slides her hands up under his jacket, sucking his lip into her mouth gently. She’s good. He pushes her back a little so that he can get a look at the flush starting on her neck, kissing up under her ear and breathing in her perfume. It tastes like something under his tongue.

He looks at the dangling air fresheners while she takes her skivvy off, pulling his hands over her bra. He scrapes his thumbs over the lace, making her squirm, up and over the curve of her breasts and around over her shoulders to the fastening. She pushes him back just slightly, breathing heavy, eyes on his mouth.

“You’re a good kisser,” she says.

She’s better at it than him but he’ll take it.

“Do you want to slow down?” he asks, because she hasn’t tried for his belt yet and it seems like maybe she does. She shakes her head, no, and pushes him back into the seat, kisses turning hungry, coming faster, smearing along his jaw. Her hands come up to stroke at his new stubble, one thumb finding the tender spot where Harrington had really nailed him, even though the bruise has faded and gone. He’s quiet – has never allowed himself to be otherwise, but he gasps when she licks over it, sealing her mouth there and sliding her fingers up through his hair, pulling.

She’s smiling into his mouth when he really starts kissing back, his arms tightening against her, wrapping around her ribs to pull her closer, to keep her lips on his. She’s almost laughing. He doesn’t mind. Just keeps kissing and kissing and kissing her. Like he’s always going to be hungry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't kidding about the slow burn -_- Really fucked myself over on that one. More of Billy's real princess coming up though ;)


	3. harmless and horrible

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so so much to you lovely people who commented last chapter. This one is dialogue heavy and trying to get it right almost killed me x_x

 

“You will not believe what I just heard.”

Billy pauses with his meatloaf halfway to his mouth. Carol is looking down at him expectantly over her lunch tray, mouth ticked up in one corner, betraying her excitement. He sighs and drops his fork. “Get lost,” he says to the kid across from him so that she can slide in.

He doesn’t normally eat in the cafeteria for just this reason. Prefers to spend his lunch break in his car with the radio on and a three-course meal of Marlboros. Except now he has no allowance, and no smokes since he smoked his last pack over a week ago. He’s _aching_ for nicotine. His dreams are all fucked up and unnatural, have him waking up chewing away at his own fingers. He’s already tossed his room twice in the hope of finding a stray stick, even got up in the middle of the night to look under his car seats with a torch once the inspiration came to him. Nada. The cafeteria food tastes like dogshit, but it beats sitting alone in his car picking at Susan’s crummy health food and listening to his stomach growl.

Carol drops her tray down. Somehow she’s managed to sweet talk her way into an extra pudding cup. She takes her time settling in, smirking, knowing that he doesn’t want to have to ask if her gossip is about him. He raises his eyebrows at her like, well?

“We missed you at the movies last Friday…”

“Get to the point, Carol.”

Her smile widens. “Word is you took Lacey Fieldman to Lovers’ Lake and didn’t—” She makes a gesture with her fingers, her tongue in her cheek.  

He narrows his eyes. “Says who?”

“So it’s true,” she says, eyes gleaming.

He shrugs, aiming for indifference. “What’s it to you?” He stabs at his meatloaf. “I don’t screw and tell.”

Carol rests her face in her hands, practically glowing. “Yeah, that’s about what she said. So, what’s the deal? She special or something?”

He gives her a flat look. Lacey is the furthest thing from special and Carol knows it, that’s why she promised him she would be a sure thing.

He’s not a pig like some guys, isn’t interested in hurting some bitch’s feelings just for the reputation. Still, he doesn’t need the easiest girl in school going around running her mouth about him treating her different.

“Didn’t have a rubber,” he says around a mouthful of food, letting the implications of that do the nasty work for him, which it does if Carol’s delighted expression is any indicator. It’s a half-truth anyway.

He scans the cafeteria for Lacey’s ponytail, but his eyes land on Nancy Wheeler instead. She doesn’t look so pinched today. She’s sitting with Byers, her normally prissy little mouth stretched up into a wry smile. They make an odd pair. Byers especially looks out of place in the buzzing cafeteria, his satchel tucked between the table and his chest in case he needs to pack up and run.

Carol realizes she’s been tuned out and follows his line of sight to where Wheeler is tugging playfully at a book in Byers’ hands. “Little Miss Perfect?” she says, turning to face him. “Forget it. She might look all sweet and dewy, but she’s _very_ sloppy seconds from what I heard through Stevie’s bedroom wall. Not to mention, she’s dating the freak. Although…” She swivels back around. “You do have one thing in common.”

He tries not to bristle. They have something in common alright, but he doubts that’s what Carol has latched on to. And Byers thinks punk rock is music, so they’re practically a different species. He arches an eyebrow at her. “It look like I’m into wearing hand-me-downs?”

She snorts, prying open the lip of her milk carton. “No. But you’re both _into_ punching King Steve in the face. Maybe that’s her type.”

“Well, she’s not mine,” he says. “And Harrington’s not king of shit anymore.”

Carol hums an agreement. “He’s already in so much trouble with his parents about college applications.” She twirls her hair. “He misses any more class and they’re gonna make him go to summer school.”

“Who’s going to special school?” Tommy asks, sliding in beside Carol and throwing his arm around her. He looks at Billy. “Carol’s going - otherwise they’re not going to let her graduate next year,” he adds out of the side of his mouth.

“Hey!” She socks him in the shoulder. “It’s not my fault Mr. Mundy grades on a dumb curve. I would have passed if there weren’t so many squares in my class.” 

“It’s baby algebra, Carol. I don’t think there’s that big of a curve.”

She gives him a pouty look, dropping a pudding cup onto his tray. Billy averts his eyes so he doesn’t have to see them sucking face.

He finds himself staring at Byers again. It’s an affront to the natural order of things, he decides. No one with a haircut like that should be allowed to steal Harrington’s girl. He’s spent more time this last week puzzling over it than he even cares to examine, like if he works out how the two of them sucked all the fight out of Harrington he’ll be able to get over the feeling of dissatisfaction that’s been plaguing him since that night.

“So, what were you talking about?” Tommy asks.

“No one,” Billy says, but Carol talks over the top of him.

“Nancy Wheeler,” she says in a pointed tone. “Think she’ll set her sights on Billy now?” She walks her fingers up Tommy’s arm. “Sure seems like she has a thing for guys who beat Steve up.”

Tommy’s face darkens. “Yeah, but she also has a thing for _losers_ , remember?” he spits.

The both of them turn to stare at Byers and Wheeler across the cafeteria.

Carol pats Tommy's arm to get his attention. “Hey. Do you think they _do_ it with the camera – like, taking pictures?” she asks.

Tommy grimaces. “You know, I bet he kept all those pervert shots of you from the pool to beat off to.” He mimes taking a snap of her and she shoves him, gagging. 

Neither of them bother to explain what the hell they’re talking about and he’s not going to ask. They do that all the time – get carried away with stories they forget he doesn’t have any context for.

It all fits so poorly, he realizes, these spoils of Harrington’s life. His friends that have conversations around an empty seat when he’s right there across the table from them. The girls that probably recycle the same love letters to slip into his locker. The guys on the team who wait a beat too long for someone else to lead the huddle. It’s like Billy is some goddamn cuckoo bird that’s hatched itself in the nest meant for Harrington.

He needs Harrington to come back.

He swallows around the sour taste of the realization. He needs Harrington to come back so he can stop thinking about _when_ he's going to come back. Can make sure he’s put down for good; so he doesn’t have to feel like an imposter in his own life.

“Are you gonna eat the rest of your meatloaf?” Carol asks, fork already poised over his food.

He tugs his tray closer. “Eat your own.”

^^^

He’s still thinking about it that weekend while he does his English homework, novel folded in one hand while he reads. Whatever kind of bird Harrington is, when Billy kicked him out of the nest he should have made sure he broke his neck on the way down. That’s the crux of his problem, or, at least, that’s what he’s gleaned from the book. The boys on the island can’t let themselves truly enjoy it until they realize there’s no escape and then get rid of the little buzzkill who keeps reminding them that they don’t belong. 

He uncaps a highlighter with his teeth and uses it to circle a chunk of text.

“Mom says you have to take me to look at Christmas trees.”

Billy doesn’t move from his spot under the car, pretending to be asleep. It’s freezing under there, the cold from the cement leaching right through his jeans, but it’s peaceful, and being upright after last night’s party makes him want to barf. He hears Max’s reluctant footsteps scraping closer over the driveway and then the dull impact of her kicking the sole of his boot.

“She gave me money for gas.”

He scoots out from under the chassis, squinting. Susan’s clearly finished giving her her biannual haircut with a pair of kitchen scissors – which is what drove him under the Camaro in the first place – and her cropped locks are as bright as copper wiring in the late afternoon sun. She’s going to be a real beauty one day, just like her mother always tells her.

“Okay,” he says, dusting himself off. “But we’re sure as shit not going to look at trees.”

She bugs her eyes at him, holding up the folded bills like, _obviously_.

“So, where are we going then?” he asks once they’re out of the driveway and the heat’s running. 

Max reaches over and redirects one of the vents to her. “Downtown,” she says. “I need something for the dance.”

He eyeballs her. It’s hardly a topic of conversation he’s interested in, but it’s unusual for her to give two shits about something like that either. It would seem Susan’s efforts to transform her into a little lady are beginning to have an effect. He’s not sure how he feels about it. It might be nice not to constantly get the blame for her acting like a feral animal. On the other hand, he’s never particularly wanted to cohabitate with a little sister, which was why he’d sunk so much time into teaching her how to skate in the first place.

He shoves the arm of his aviators into his mouth and chews at it while he drives and listens to her nattering on about the apparently mortifying ordeal of middle-school dance lessons. The first thing he’s going to do with that money is buy a packet of smokes.

Even with the heat blasting, he can feel the creep of cold through the glass, getting in under the sherpa lining of his jacket. The air has that kind of cold about it when there’s been no rain to take out the dry, the type that gets in your nose and throat. It makes Hawkins smell like woodsmoke instead of cow shit, which is okay.

“I mean, I don’t want to take her stupid lessons,” Max says, “but what if someone asks me to dance?”

“Doubt it. Guys only want to dance with girls who are pretty.”

Her nose wrinkles. “Lacey Fieldman isn’t that pretty.”

He smirks. “Well, you haven’t seen all of her.”

She’s dead wrong, too. Everyone thinks Lacey’s plenty pretty. Hair with sun in it like Brooke Shields, lips that always turn up at the corners. Perky tits. A hell of a lot prettier than Nancy Wheeler, that’s for sure. And she’s smarter than people give her credit for too, since she’s obviously figured out how to string him along for a few more dates.

There’re plenty of empty parking spaces Downtown since everyone sensible has stayed indoors. Without the usual buzz of people doing their weekend shopping the quaint shopfronts look like staged facades, like the set of an old western.

He trails Maxine into the thrift store. The clerk about dies of shock when she sees she has customers, hastily sweeping her knitting under the counter and giving them a welcoming smile. Max seems to know what she’s after, bypassing the ugly furniture and heading straight into a maze of crowded clothing racks. It smells stale back there so he takes himself off to look at the same bin of tapes and records he’s already picked over a dozen times.

He doesn’t even know how a place like Hawkins has a second-hand store. Sure there’s a poor end of town but it would be impossible to buy something here without eventually running into the original owner. It makes him wonder how many of Jonathan Byers’ clothes have somebody else’s name inked inside the collar. Billy’s not like that. He likes the look and smell and feel of new, even if he can’t always have it; clothes that promise the whole package. He’d rather die than admit it, but he’s about as desperate as any bitch at Hawkins High for the new mall to open.

He shuffles through the bin of cassettes and, yeah, all these tapes are the same crap from years back. Disco, country, Christian learning for children. There’s a distinct hole in the selection of punk. He gives the clerk a sullen look while he flicks through rhythmically - _clack, clack, clack_. He doesn’t know why he bothers looking. It’s not like someone in Hawkins is going to buy _Ride the Lightning_ and then donate it so Billy can get his hands on a copy. 

He lasts about another five minutes and Maxine is still sliding hangers around with intense focus, so he heads over to the RadioShack. The guy behind the counter goes on alert when he wanders in, eyes following him suspiciously. The Hawkins branch only stocks a barebones selection of metal but the new Metallica album is there on display in its shiny jewel case. He only lets himself touch the corner of it, not pick it up. The cover art is so fucking cool he’s already resigned to seeing it in his dreams – he doesn’t need to get too attached. 

He thumbs the price sticker. It would be the dregs of his savings _and_ whatever he can scrounge from Susan’s overly generous gas allowance. And he still needs smokes for the week.

It’s still tempting.

He makes himself move on, looking at the shelves of electronics, checking out the Walkman he’s already earmarked for his Christmas present this year. He never gave much of a shit about the holiday before Susan came into their lives. Now it’s the best day of the year even if he rarely gets what he wants. It’s still more than what he and his dad used to do for each other.

Once he gets tired of making the RadioShack clerk nervous he wanders back out and idles up the strip, peering in at the display of guns in the bait and tackle place, a boutique with a suit and prom dress in the window. When he was still living with his mom he used to take the bus down to the pier so he could cruise the boardwalk all day long, pigging out on ice cream. He did it day after day and it still felt like he’d never get enough time to explore all of it. He should have rationed Hawkins, he thinks, reaching the end of the strip.

When he’s exhausted everything he wants to look at he heads back to the thrift store, but Max still isn’t ready to leave, straight up ignoring his pointed huffing while she peruses the crowded clothes racks. There’s a selection of ugly puffy dresses folded over one of her arms.

“Christ, Maxine. What’s Susan put in your head now?”

She doesn’t look up from her browsing. “It’s not for me.”

“This gonna take much longer? I got places to be.” Like right back under his car avoiding Neil. He takes off without waiting around for her answer, hating the dry dusty smell of the place. On his way out he hears the store clerk approaching Max.

“Is there something in particular you’re looking for, hun?”

“Something...” he hears Max say just before the door closes behind him, bell chiming “bitchin’.”

Outside is still cold and gray, colder for having been inside the still of the shop for a moment. He tucks his hands into his armpits and starts walking back down the lot, checking out the handful of parked cars. One of the cop cars is parked out front of the Hideaway but the rest are concentrated in front of the supermarket and the RadioShack. He runs his hand over their tail lights as he walks aimlessly. Gray. Green. A patchy beater he half-recognizes.

Deep red-brown.

He pauses with his hand over the rear badge of Harrington’s BMW.

He swallows, looking around the lot for its owner. There’s no one except for some old lady struggling with a cart further down. He licks his lips, fingers tensing reflexively over the chrome lettering. It’s a 7-Series. He knew that at first glance, of course, but it’s different to see it up close. He’s only really seen one before in a magazine, and even then he’d flicked past the full-page spread with the same level of enthusiasm he would have for an ad for buying a timeshare in the Bahamas; no use looking at something you’re never going to have. He can almost feel the sharp rap on his knuckles for having touched it.

It’s just some rich kid car, he reminds himself. Why half the girls at school are always rubbing all over the thing like cats he has no idea. Although the paint job is top notch, like poured chocolate. He pulls his fingers away, darting another quick look around the lot. It’s not like there’s ever going to be another chance to check one out so freely. Okay. Okay, he’s doing this. He reaches out and traces a hand over the clean line of the tailgate, following it up against the glossy shine of a door panel, stooping to look in at the backseat, and—

Yeah.

Fucking gorgeous. Legroom for miles, big supple leather seats he can almost smell already - probably custom, power windows... His sigh catches on the tinted glass, a shrinking fog of condensation with his reflection behind it.

When he straightens up Steve Harrington is watching him.

He’s standing a couple of meters away from the driver’s side door, keys in hand and paper bag tucked under one arm. It’s a testament to how nicotine deprived Billy is that the unlit cigarette perched on Harrington’s bottom lip must send him into some kind of immediate withdrawal, his face and chest breaking out in a prickling flush, pulse speeding.

Harrington is staring at him, face blank with surprise behind his movie-star sunglasses. He’s still wearing Billy’s colors, although they’re faded to yellow and green, only a nasty cut on his lip still vivid. He doesn’t look anywhere near as bad as he’d imagined or hoped. 

He should say something - or Harrington should - but the moment stretches out too long and then they’ve both missed it. 

“Hey, hey, Steve? Do you think she’ll be pissed off we didn’t get her like, a _girl_ walkie talkie or should we— _ahh_!” It’s the curly-haired one, busy trying to wrench open the plastic shell on a package and bumping into Harrington from behind so that the paper bag lurches forward, spilling half a dozen blank tapes onto the ground with a clatter.

The tapes keep coming, sliding one after the other out of the sagging bag as Harrington fumbles with it, muttering a quiet, “ _Fuck_.”

Billy doesn’t wait around, just turns on his heel and marches as fast as he can without looking like he’s running, barking, “Max!” over his shoulder, loud enough that she’ll hear it through the window – loud enough that the old lady packing her trunk turns to scowl at him. He slams his car door shut, fuming. It’s a fucking disaster for his ego, running into Harrington like this, with his paws all over the guy’s douchey car.

He watches the BMW pull out and leave. A minute later, Max comes trotting out – not from the thrift store but from Melvald’s over the street – looking unfazed by his glare.

“The fuck took you so long,” he snarls, snatching the change off her. It’s enough for a full tank and more.

Not enough for what the outing’s cost him.  

^^^

He’s going to fuck Lacey. That’s his plan for the night, but also the general consensus of the guys on the team. It’s been two weeks. She must know there’s only so many times they can fool around in his car before he starts to lose interest, and if it stretches out any longer then they’re both going to get confused about who is stalling who. Plus, everyone knows Billy’s girl puts out, so soon her little purity act is going to stop being a thrill and start being someone’s gossip - probably Carol’s, if he’s not careful. The party is just another lame get together in some kid’s cousin’s house while the folks are out of town, but he has it on good authority from Tommy that there’ll be enough booze and enough of a crowd to make it worth his while.

He spends so long getting ready in the bathroom that both Maxine and Susan are annoyed at him when he gets out. Maxine makes a face at the smell of his cologne but Susan looks taken aback. He’s wearing the baby blue button-down she’d bought for him a while back. He’d initially stuffed it in a bottom drawer, loathe to wear anything chosen by someone who voluntarily attended a fortnightly book club, but then he’d realized it actually fell very neatly into the category of shirts he could tuck into his jeans without having to do up at all. He spreads out in the door frame so they can both soak it all up. Max might need her mom to promise her she’ll grow into her looks, but Billy’s always known he was hot shit.

“You’re such a _girl_ ,” Max growls, shoving past and gagging when she encounters the residue of his hair spray cloud.

Billy just laughs it up. He doesn’t hate Hawkins tonight. He’s got his music up as loud as he likes, his favorite earring in, his hair set just right – feeling like he fits in his skin for the first time in a long time. Neil is out on a shift at the plant and there’s no one around to tell him he shouldn’t spend time looking good in the mirror.

Even waiting for Susan to get done stuffing Maxine into whatever dress she’s picked out doesn’t put a dampener on his good mood. He heads down to the car early when Susan breaks out the camera and busies himself getting a Whitesnake tape queued up.

Max practically flies out of the house with Susan beaming behind her. The dress didn’t make it but Susan got her compromise in the form of a fussy-looking braid in the front of her hair.

He blows his smoke out the window while he drives since she’ll get at him if he makes her smell. It’s some kind of night. Cold but not biting. Warm enough to be in and out of his jacket, roll his windows up or down. The music makes it near-on perfect. Max is quiet, pissed probably, because of the volume, but even that doesn’t bother him. When he comes to a rolling stop in front of the gym doors and she doesn’t take a hint and jump out he realizes she’s not pissed at all. She’s biting her lip, nervous.

He clears his throat like, hey, are you okay and can you get out of my car? - but no reaction. She’s staring at the wedge of light spilling out from the open doors. He doesn’t have time for this. There’s free booze going somewhere in Hawkins and a house full of people waiting for Billy to drink his fill, so long as he does it upside down with a spout in his mouth.

Some kid’s parent behind them honks so Billy gives the lady a quick bashful wave and a grin and then takes his keys out of the ignition, settling in. Max is oblivious, fingers busy tugging at the knot Susan has put in her hair. He smacks her hand away.

“Leave it.”

She scowls at him. “I look stupid!”

“No shit.”

It’s not, apparently, the right thing to say. She looks at a couple of girls in frilly skirts wandering in through the doors together and hunches in on herself. “Can you just drop me off at the arcade?” 

He blows out a breath. If he’s not supposed to smoke near her hairstyle then Susan’s probably not going to be cool with him shunting her out the car window. “Look,” he says, drumming his fingers even more impatiently. “Everyone at these things looks stupid. Your dork friends are gonna look stupid. At least we’re not from this shitty little cow town, and actually know how to dance.” He leans over her and shoves the door open. “Tell Sinclair to keep his hands above the waist.”

Max stares at him with her mouth pinched in a line. The lady behind is really laying on the horn now and one of the teachers has ducked his head outside the building to see what’s causing the pileup. Just when he thinks he’s going to have to army carry Max in, she unbuckles her seatbelt and gets out, striding off towards the gym all determined like there’s a limit on how many girls in sneakers are allowed to attend and she wants to make the cut. He waits until she disappears inside, a coyote among housecats, before putting his keys back in the ignition.

He’s supposed to wait around for Tommy and Carol so he can follow their car out of town, and he has time to kill, so he pulls up and parks on the outskirts, intending to smoke in peace. It’s still relatively warm out, balmy even, so long as he turns his collar up and ignores the sting in his exposed fingertips. He’s just got the end of his first Marlboro between his lips, patting himself down for a lighter, when a cop car turns into the lot. Shit. He crouches instinctively, moving into the shadowy space between cars and slinking away, out of range of its headlights, cutting a quick path around the side of the building.

Hawkins is fucking creepy at night – the school even more so, all the spaces normally filled with noise and light gone dark and stagnant, an invitation for something sinister; an abandoned world. It’s some comfort to know he’s the meanest thing walking in it, but it still makes the hair on the backs of his arms stand up.

Of course, it makes sense that Harrington’s there too.

Adrenaline fizzes at the base of his brain. Harrington’s leaned up against the brick, arms folded, one half of his pale face illuminated by a slice of light from the propped open door, one big sad doe-eye lit amber as honey. Whatever he’s looking at has him completely entranced, cigarette half-forgotten in one hand. Billy tugs his own unlit stick out of his mouth so that it doesn’t fall when he breaks into a grin.

“You should have stayed buried, Harrington,” he says from a distance, giving the guy a more than fair head start.

Harrington doesn’t even flinch, eyes flicking over him dismissively, mouth unhappy. “Man. Get away from me.”

“And let you stay here rubbing one out to my sister? I don’t think so.”

That gets more of a reaction, Harrington stiffening up against the brick, brow furrowing. “What— _No_. God, that’s—Don’t you have someone else you can pick a fight with?”

“None who bruise up quite so easy,” he says, reaching out to poke at his jaw. Harrington knocks his hand away with an annoyed sound. Up close, he can see Harrington’s face is actually completely healed – pretty as a picture. It’s like Billy never happened to him, like the bruises just came off with a bit of soap and water. Something about that makes him itch, makes him want to mark it all up again. He feels like he does after a good game, like he’s too high on himself to control what comes out of his mouth. He knows he’s smiling. Knows what that looks like.

Harrington is giving him a completely unimpressed look. He’s got to hand it to the guy, he does aloof well. It must be something, he thinks, to want the guy to like you – coming up against all that silver-spoon-cool superiority. 

“Give me a light,” he says.

Harrington blows out a slow stream of smoke. “Sorry. Forgot my lighter.”

“Don’t be like that, amigo.” He squeezes in against the wall beside the door, way too close for friendly, blocking Harrington’s view. “I’m being real civil.”

“Yeah, you’re a real peach. Answer’s no.”

Billy plucks the cigarette out of his mouth. It’s only really possible because Harrington lets him, arms still crossed, deliberately unperturbed by Billy’s invasion of his personal space. He’s still playing by the rules of his world instead of the rules of the jungle, just like that night in front of the Byers’ house, thinking propriety will keep Billy from sinking his fangs in.

He uses the cherry of Harrington’s stick to light his own and offers it back, amicable-like. Harrington takes it from him just as casual, as if he never minded sharing. On his next exhale he makes a show of thumbing a stray fleck of tobacco off his tongue after, like Billy’s made it taste cheap with just a touch.

Billy’s never really learned to do that: use silence to do the dirty work instead of words or fists. Kids like Harrington and Tommy H do it without having to think about it. With their posture; with that look in their eyes like nothing you say or do to them is really going to leave a mark, secure in the knowledge that life is going to pick them back up and dust them off. Billy doesn’t have that luxury; has to win every fight he starts or he’d never get back up again.

He moves away from the wall abruptly and Harrington can’t quite hide the way he tenses.

“Relax, Harrington. I don’t want our first dance to be to Spandau Ballet.” He waves his cigarette in the direction of the filtering music. “Just wanted to know what’s got you out here in the dark peeping.” He backs up enough to peer in through the gym door. It takes him a while to find Wheeler in the crowd of swaying middle schoolers, but there she is, a foregone conclusion, hair all piled up and pretty, trying to tease Jonathan Byers away from his photographer's stand. Oh man, now he’s disappointed _for_ Harrington.

“Yeah, that’s not what it looks like,” Harrington says, a little too defensive to be anything but exactly what it looks like.

He snorts. “Oh yeah? They know you’re out here? That’s too good, Harrington. You gonna be their driver for the night?”

Harrington’s eyes narrow. Got it in one.

Billy laughs, tongue working excitedly around a mouthful of smoke. “Damn, Harrington. If I knew I was just getting Byers’ leftovers I never would have taken a swing at you.”

“Yeah,” Harrington says, tired and angry, throwing the last of his cigarette on the ground. “Yeah, I don’t need this right now.”

“You can stare at him all you want,” Billy calls after him, following, helpless to his own desire to keep pulling Harrington’s pigtails. “You’re not gonna figure it out.”

“You’re fucking deranged,” Harrington tosses nastily over his shoulder.

“You wanna know why she chose him, huh?” Billy says.

Harrington turns around and he can see the stiff set of his shoulders that says he does, more than anything. “I know why she chose him, asshole,” he says, eyes sliding away and fixing on the open door for a moment. “He’s a good guy.”

“You both are,” Billy says happily, blowing a line of smoke a calculated distance from Harrington’s cheek. _Pussy_ , he thinks when Harrington doesn’t rise to the bait. He flicks the butt away. “He just doesn’t have to try so hard at it.”

It lands better than he thought it would. Harrington’s eyes, so cool and disinterested, go big and round for a moment, flicking over him, darkening. He shakes his head as if to dislodge a thought. There’s anger there now - barely embers, but he’ll take it. Harrington probably doesn’t realize it, but he’s moved just infinitesimally closer, using every millimeter of the small height advantage he has. “You think just because you put me down once you know me? You _don’t_.”

“Nobody put you down but you, Harrington,” he says. “I just made sure you knew it. You ever want to drop this sheep’s clothing shit, this” – he gestures vaguely up and down – “good guy act, I’ll be here to put you down again.”

Harrington looks at him quietly for a moment. C’mon, Billy thinks. _C’mon_. But then, disastrously, whatever small spark was building between them just—dies out. “Man,” Harrington says, backing off, tired and sneering. “Whatever gets your rocks off. No one’s acting. This is just me.”

It’s infuriating. It’s such a fucking lie. Harrington’s already turning away from him and Billy’s feet are still planted out of instinct. He didn’t misread shit. Harrington just turned it off like a switch, like it’s something he can choose. He’s spoiled it, for both of them.

It’s a real dent in an otherwise great night, is what it is.

Billy watches him walk away, licking his lips in search of the right words, but before he can come up with anything Tommy’s car is rounding the corner with a squeal of tires and pulling up beside them.

Harrington looks up at the sky, running a hand through his fluffed-up hair in frustration.

“Stevie-boy,” Tommy says, openly delighted, hooking an arm out the driver’s side window. Carol leans forward in the passenger seat, smacking gum. “They kick you out of the Snow Ball?”

“Get lost, Tommy.”

“Whoa, Stevie,” Carol says, putting her hand over her heart all mock-hurt. “What crawled up your ass and died?”

Harrington glowers at them. “Why don’t you ask your new friend?”

“What’s the matter, Harrington?” Tommy asks. “Feeling left out? Hey, maybe you should come with us tonight. Now that Byers is moving up in the world we’re in need of someone to laugh at.”

Harrington flips him the bird. “No thank you and go fuck yourself.” He goes to reach for his car door and then seems to remember something, turning back. “And tell your girl thanks for the casserole.”

Tommy scowls, snarling, “You better get in daddy’s car and get out of here right now, Harrington, or—”

“Or what, Tommy?” Harrington says drily. “You’ll get a nose bleed?”

Tommy ratchets the handbrake so hard it makes Billy cringe. He’s out of the car in a flash, pale face flush with color, stalking towards Harrington like he means business. “Big words for someone who goes down easier than a Kerley County prom queen.” 

“Like you would know,” Carol mutters, slipping out of the car beside him with her hands stuffed in her pockets. She shoots an exasperated look at Billy like he’s supposed to do something about this. He doesn’t like that shit at all, being made to act the part of a bitch. But he also knows he doesn’t want Tommy to get the fight out of Harrington he couldn’t.

“We getting out of here or what?” he says to break it up, grabbing Tommy’s arm before he can get past. The slick fabric of Tommy’s jacket slides under his hand but it’s enough to stop him. He’s like Harrington: all theatre, no actual force.

Tommy jabs a finger at his ex-friend. “I’m sick of this sad-sack bullshit, man.”

“Come _on_ , Tommy,” Carol says, stomping her foot impatiently.

“You know what?” Tommy forces a laugh, shaking Billy off. “You belong out here. You know why you weren’t invited tonight? Everyone’s forgotten about you, man. You’re not what you used to be. You’re bullshit now. You’re a _ghost_.”

Harrington stares at him for a beat. It pisses him off, he realizes, how a dumbass like Tommy can know how to get under Harrington’s skin so easily.

“Yeah, well, at least I’m not an asshole.”

“Leave it,” Billy says, sensing Tommy winding up again. His good mood is all but vanished. He needs liquor. He needs noise. He needs a crowd of people cheering him as he follows Lacey Fieldman upstairs. The saxophone solo from _Careless Whisper_ cuts across the darkened lot and it’s the lamest ambience for a showdown ever. He shoves Tommy back a step. Yeah, the guy’s definitely giving him a lift to his car after this nonsense. “Like you said,” he says so Harrington can hear. “He’s bullshit.”

Harrington doesn’t have a clever come back for that. He rubs a hand down one arm like he’s just now feeling the cold through his fine sweater. Tommy shrugs out of Billy’s grip again, storming off towards his car. Billy follows after one last scornful look over his shoulder.

“Don’t wait around for too long, okay, Stevie?” Carol calls, trailing after. “I don’t think Little Miss Perfect is coming out here to kiss you goodnight.”

Billy slides into the passenger seat, leaving Carol to climb into the back.

Tommy rounds on her the moment the door slams shut, smacking her arm. “Seriously? You made him a fucking casserole?” 

Carol makes a face. “What? His parents are in _Malta_. You know he’ll only eat pizza all week.”

“Big fucking deal, he’s—”

They all jump at the sound of Harrington tapping on the glass. He’s standing by the passenger side, eyebrows raised, waiting for Billy to wind the window down.

Billy does it real slow. “Forget something, Your Highness?”

Harrington’s eyes flick over him in annoyance. Up this close with his arm up on the car roof Billy can smell his laundry detergent. _Christ_. Harrington darts a look at the light spilling out of the gym door and then ducks his head to stare in at Tommy coldly.

“Where’s the party?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments/kudos mean the world to me. Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Edit: Added True by Spandau Ballet to the playlist since obviously Billy’s a huge liar and wants to have their first dance to it.


	4. animals anyway (part one)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to split this chapter in two because the word count got out of control. Please enjoy me beating the shit out of Billy with a stick so I can get him nice and tender for Steve.
> 
> Edit: Slight content warning for Billy dissociating.

It turns out the party is on an actual fucking farm. The whole place stinks of fertilizer and he’s apparently the only one who can smell it. From outside the house looks abandoned, empty, its windows dark even though its rooms are packed full of bodies and smoke and the agitated thump of pop music. 

There’s no sign of Harrington.

Billy doesn’t care. Not really. He’s drunk before they even get in the front door.

He didn’t mean for it to happen that way. That’s one of his rules too, like not talking in the locker room: don’t get drunk and stupid. But he’s broke, and Tommy has a slab of some fancy import beer that he can have as much as he wants of for as long as he can keep up the charade of teaching Carol to shotgun. They prop themselves up against his car out front, in between the headlights, watching cars pull up, one after the other, churning the scrubby lawn into dirt. Shitty two-doors. Trucks. Vans.

No BMW.

He can tell after the first can that Carol already knows how to shotgun a beer – sucks it down too neat and fast to be anything but pro - but Tommy lets it happen anyway, too much of a pussy to get Billy’s hands off his beer or his girl. Hell, sometimes there’s a look in his eye like he’ll let Billy teach him how to shotgun too. Billy fumbles the next can on purpose, gets spray all over Carol’s chin just to make her squawk, just to piss Tommy off, just so he can down the foaming beer himself and crack another.

By the time the rest of the team arrives with the keg he’s trashed and stumbling – the best and worst he’s been since Hayward. He’s not the kind of guy who should be uninhibited. Being a happy drunk probably isn’t part of his genetic makeup. Maybe it doesn’t matter tonight. It isn’t the usual Hawkins crowd but something a little wilder; faces he doesn’t recognize and a healthy mix of older college-age kids too. 

Tommy and Carol cling to him like ducklings as they make their way inside, brimming with nervous excitement.

The inside of the house is chaos, loud and smoky, dirt tracked all over the floor, gritty underfoot. The only light filters dimly from somewhere further in, the front rooms seething with people in the semidarkness punctuated by glowing cigarette tips and lighter flames. It loosens something in him: the undercurrent of danger and the anonymity of the crowd. He crows as he enters behind the keg, tripping in the long rut it makes pulled through the mud. Someone crows back as he catches himself on the door, shoving a dixie cup into his chest and spilling something all down his front. He sucks it up through his shirt – straight bourbon, sticky and sweet.   

He was expecting to make more of an entrance but he’s swallowed up in the press of bodies immediately, rubbing up against shoulders and elbows as he shoves his way through. He can’t hear a goddamn thing even though people keep trying to talk to him, Tommy's grip pinching into his collarbone, steering him towards faces he's supposed to recognize. Someone’s playing a shitty pop hit at full volume, but there’s something more satisfying and thrashy coming from one of the other rooms and he feels the clash of it in his atoms.

They get him to the keg eventually, posted up in the kitchen where the light is coming from a single dim yellow bulb. Most of the team has congregated there already, asserting dominance over the punch bowl and all the pretty things in Hawkins that need the light to be noticed. He makes a beeline for Lacey sitting primly on the kitchen counter right under the light like something from a stage play. She draws him in with her legs and he shoves his nose straight into where she puts her perfume, breathing her in and working hard on not burping while she affectionately tucks his shirt back into his jeans. She’s even sweeter than the bourbon, the only thing in the whole goddamn world that isn’t spinning. 

“You’re late, cowboy,” she says, pushing his face back to get a look at him. Her eyebrows pinch together. “You’re drunk.” 

“I still got what you need,” he says, guiding her hands back down to his belt. One of her nails catches on the bare skin of his stomach as she reels him in. He shivers, trying to look down between them to see, but it makes him too dizzy. His body looks like someone else’s body between her legs, numb, hands like plasticine.

“Gonna make me wait for it any longer?” she breathes in his ear.

He shakes his head. “Gonna show you what’s worth waiting for.”

“Take me somewhere quiet then, so you can make me loud.”

The girl on the counter next to them dissolves into giggles and Lacey hits her on the arm. He pushes up against the counter trying to get at her lips but she draws away, smirking, not wanting to smear her purple lipstick or maybe just teasing him.

A hand claps him on the back - one of the guys from the team who probably has a name that Billy can’t give a damn recalling right now. Real freckly. One giant freckle. Damn, if Billy stays in Indiana any longer there’s going to be nothing but freckles left of him too.

“There’s the man of the hour,” the guy shouts at him, shaking his shoulder and tugging him towards the keg. He tries to move but Lacey’s legs cinch around him.

“Fuck off, Toby. We’re busy.”

“What’s the  _race_ -y, Lacey?” the guy slurs. “You’ll get him after.”

“Later,” Billy says, pulling away, but her legs tighten again, grip firm on his belt.

“No, not later. Now.”

She’s frowning like it’s a big deal. One of the other guys has come to help, a big wet hand on the back of his neck. They’re chanting for him already. He’s the center of attention and it’s time to start the show. It dawns on him that he lost Tommy and Carol in the crowd some time ago, so they’re not going to be there to cheer him on. Someone not Tommy is going to hold his leg.

“Later,” he promises again, prying Lacey’s hands off him, maybe being a little rough. She hops off the counter, shooting him an indecipherable look before twisting away into the crowd, her friend chasing after. A round of jeers from the team follows her.

The keg is tapped, waiting patiently on a chair like the world’s ugliest dinner guest, the table next to it shaking under the weight of spectators who’ve climbed on top for the view. He’s nowhere near fighting fit. He’s going to puke if they tip him. But fuck it, they’re chanting his name now -  _“Billy, Billy, Billy”_  - and he’s wasted, happy, everything he could learn to like about Hawkins under the one roof. He grabs up the keg line and showboats a little, putting the tap in between his teeth.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Peterson?” Tommy hisses, bulling his way through to Billy’s side and slapping the other guy’s hands away. “I’ve got this, man.” He wraps a possessive hand around Billy’s bicep, shouting something in his ear. Tommy’s grip there does something Pavlovian to him, gets him tilting forward into a headstand right away, grabbing for the lip of the keg, the world lurching as the guys scramble to boost his legs up.

Tommy’s words register as his mouth floods with beer.

_“He’s here.”_

He forgets to breathe through his nose for a moment, like a rookie, lukewarm beer spraying everywhere before he swallows, stinging in his sinuses. He can feel Tommy staggering against him, trying to keep him steady, trying to counter the kick of his legs. He’s carrying most of his own weight anyway, too vertical.

Being drunk actually helps, his focus funnelling down to the rhythmic swallowing of beer, staring mindlessly at the crowd of inverted faces, a forest of denim-covered legs.

Five seconds…Seven seconds… Twelve seconds…

His temples start to pound, blood flooding to his face. He keeps chugging, keeps his throat open, sucking down foam without tasting it, nostrils full of bitter fumes. The crowd parts just a little and he can see that, yes, Steve Harrington’s Levi’s are here. He’s talking to some prim-looking college girl, drink in hand, looking far too neat and completely at ease. It’s enraging.

The crowd of onlookers roars as the count hits twenty and Harrington glances over at the noise without breaking conversation, eyes just barely catching on Billy, upside down, and then sliding away, returning to his conversation without pause.

Billy taps out.

He bails fast, the keg nozzle hissing, crowd booing, feet hitting the ground too hard. Getting upright is close to the worst thing he’s ever done. His insides slosh end-over-end, gravity coming back down on his shoulders like an anvil. He lets the guys prop him up, swallowing reflexively around the last mouthful of beer and scrubbing the lather off his chin with the back of his hand, waiting for the world to stop somersaulting.

Twenty-one. It’s not his record, but it is Harrington’s. He sways away from the ensuing press of admirers, snatching a cup of punch as he goes. He’s supposed to find Lacey now. That’s how it’s got to go.

Except that he can’t find her – gets lost, distracted somehow by a series of dark, crowded rooms and strangers who want to keep him upright, time listing sideways as the liquor hits his bloodstream.

What he does find is the room with the faster, harder music playing. He gets straight to dancing, sliding right into the thick of the crowd. He’s a good dancer, or, better than anyone here at least. This music he can shake himself out to. In moments some girl has her hands sliding over his wet chest and a cigarette she wants to share, sticky with lip-gloss around the filter but so damn good. They bump and grind together. He gets a hand down the back of her jeans and pulls hard at her panties, until she’s on tip-toes, gasping, trying to reach his mouth.

Carol is frowning at him at some point, getting in his face. “Billy,” she says again, annoyed. “Where’s Lacey, Billy?”

He looks down at his dance partner. She’s slumped half-way down his side, hair a mess covering her face, but she probably isn’t Lacey. He says something to Carol to make her go away. It’s weird watching her try to push through the throng of people without Tommy there to help her. He laughs. She’s so tiny. She looks like Maxine. He tries to forget about it, giving himself over to the music, jumping up and down in the crush of sweaty, clumsy-limbed bodies, something a little too close to fighting for some of the senior guys who don’t know him. One of them says something sharp and he says something filthy back.

He loses the girl for a bit and then they find each other again, the two of them jumping and stumbling against each other, carving through the crowd to find where the music is loudest, back and forth to the yellow-lit island of the kitchen to dip into the punch bowl. It’s good to feel her up against him. It’s good. He always runs so hot and there’s nobody to share it with. No one to touch him. She’s feeling the music the same way he is, wanting to be violent. She tangles a hand in his hair and yanks so rough he can hear guys cheering for it; gets bow-legged and hard.

A vaguely familiar face morphs out of the clamor of bodies, slapping him on the back. “There he is,” the guy, Miller, shouts at nobody listening. He throws his arm around Billy’s neck. “This is  _the_  man.”

“Fuck off,” the girl says, pissed at the interruption, trying to steer Billy deeper and away. Billy yanks the cup of beer out of Miller’s hand and gives him a warning shove back. Miller goes happy and easy but stumbles right into some guy who pushes back hard, sending him ping-ponging right back at them, the beer flying all over some girl. 

“Hey, asshole,” her boyfriend snarls, puffing up and shoving Billy back. “You got my girlfriend wet.”

“Way I see it, I’m doing your job,” Billy says – slurs. He might just be laughing.

It’s so good and so easy. The guy is shirtfronting him, spit flying. Billy’s girl is rubbing a hand along his stomach in support, tucking up under his arm, the crowd jostling him up and down like indifferent sea swell. The ceiling sways down to him, crawling with smoke. He’s pushed or he slips and someone strong but slippery is propping him up and saying, “Someone get him off me.”

Before he blacks out he feels the prick of the syringe in his neck again; the flood of sedative stoppering all his boundless directionless anger, soaking it up in a long warm wash.

They’re chanting again in the kitchen but it’s someone else’s name.

And that’s all there is after.

^^^

Billy jolts awake in his bed to the echo of a bat slamming into floorboards once more. Sun is filtering in through the curtains already, the room warm and full of dust. He swipes at the hair plastered to his face with sweat, salty in the corners of his mouth, and waits for his thumping heart to sync up with the steady tick of reticulation outside his window.

He breathes carefully as he gets up, still dressed in last night’s clothes, boots on. He doesn’t want to wake Neil or Susan so he creeps through the house, mouth flooding with saliva, waiting until he’s outside with the door shut behind him to vomit.  

His car is parked in front of the garage. He shudders through a round of retching, hands braced on his knees. He doesn’t want to think about how he got home – whether it’s worse that he drove himself or that someone else might have found out where he lives and dropped him home. When he’s done upending the mostly liquid contents of his stomach Max is on the stoop waiting with an orange juice.

He takes it from her wordlessly, gargling and spitting a few times onto the lawn before swallowing it down. His temples throb sharply.

Maxine’s looking at him like how she did when she saw the fight between him and Neil. It’s a complicated expression: fearful and pitying, like she’s realizing he’s not the monster she thought he was, but he’s not something worth saving either. He takes a seat beside her. It’s too cold for her to be sitting out here in her dressing gown. If her mother comes out now this will be Billy’s fault.

“What do you want?” His voice comes out raspy from someone else’s cigarettes.

“We could go somewhere today,” she says.  

He grunts.

She goes quiet for a while, leaning down and folding her hands over her toes to keep them warm. His feet look like goblin feet next to hers, his all long-toed and bent, stark white where his tan ends, and hers still small and pretty.

He looks out at the quiet street. The trees have dropped most of their leaves but no one on this side of town rakes them up. The curbs are thick with banked up foliage, dry and brown. It’s too early for cars. His tired stare lands and fixes on a bird hopping around at the end of their driveway.

“Was it…” Max says, breaking the silence. “Was it really my fault we left Hayward?”

He looks at her out of the corner of his eye. She’s resting her chin on her knees, face averted behind a curtain of hair. Fucking hell, what did he say last night? This is the last thing in the world he wants to deal with right now. He wants a hash brown, and coffee, and the smell of sea salt in the air. There’s a big black hole in his memory of last night and he’s afraid to explore what might have happened inside of it. He remembers only flashes: leaning up against the front of his car before the party, watching dust motes spin in the beam of headlights; the slick soapy taste of lipstick; being alone in the middle of a long, dark, empty road.

He leans over between his knees and half-spits-half-drools a long stringer of orange-juice yellow spit onto the pavement. Nausea is building again, roiling in his stomach. 

“Yeah,” he says. It was.

“That’s not fair.” She tucks her hair behind her ears, frowning. “That’s not  _fair_ ,” she says more quietly. “I don’t even know what I did.”

“Sometimes it’s like that,” he says. Because it’s true. People don’t always need to explain why they hate you. You don’t always get to know what you need to fix. And sometimes it’s something you can’t fix anyway, and then it’s better not to know. He coughs to clear his throat. “How did I get home last night?”

Maxine eyes him, trying to gage how much he remembers. “Your friends dropped you off,” she says after a beat. “Mom came out and brought you in.”

Well, shit. “Uh huh.”

“So...she’ll tell Neil.”

So they should go somewhere. Her words from earlier suddenly make sense. He shakes his head. “He doesn’t care about that sort of thing,” he says. “He used to drink too. Don’t sweat it.” He’s practically nostalgic at the thought of it. Neil was so much worse and so much simpler on the Schlitz. Cans on the coffee table? Smooth sailing. Open bottle of something dark and malt? Find somewhere else to be.

Max shakes her head a little, hugging her knees tighter. “You wanted to sleep outside so you, um, argued. You couldn’t speak, really, but you said some things to her.” 

Ah. Well, that Neil won’t like. Maxine’s usually pretty gleeful about repeating all the dumb shit that comes out of his mouth, loves picking up new curse words, and there’s only one word she won’t say, so he definitely called Susan a cunt.

He watches the guy across the street open his front door in his pyjamas, drudging forward to pick up the morning paper, shaking the dew off the plastic wrap. His face lights up when he sees them and he waves. Max and him just stare back awkwardly from their stoop. It’s unnatural, how friendly people in Hawkins are.

His stomach twists with the first flutter of nerves. Both him and Neil have managed to keep their tempers pretty well in check since the last incident. He’s been trying. He swallows around a thick feeling. This is what comes of letting his guard down, of breaking his own rules. He should have recognized the nascent signs, stopped himself the moment he started liking his reflection in the bathroom mirror. There’s never going to be a place big enough or far enough away for him. Maybe it won’t be too bad. The Christmas season tends to soften his dad around the edges. 

“So, how’d the line dancing go, then?” he asks, just to have something else to think about.

“Lucas kissed me,” she says boldly. “Well, I kissed him.”

Billy looks over his shoulder at the kitchen window but it’s empty. He can hear the quiet sounds of Susan puttering around, cooking their breakfast. He looks back at Max and she’s watching him carefully. She’s told him to see this reaction, he realizes.

He stares at her, trying to get his brain to work. He still feels a little drunk. “Don’t talk about shit like that.”

“So you’re like him then?” She means Neil. “You hate people like Lucas. Like his family.”

Billy makes a face. “I don’t give a shit about your little boyfriend, Max, just—I don’t know.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “Don’t bring it up around him.” He honestly doesn’t know. His dad might not bat an eye at Max hanging around with a black kid. It could be something or it could be nothing with Neil. Billy hadn’t known where the line was until it threw him through a door and cracked his rib. 

“I’m not going to stop seeing my friends,” she says, chin picking up. “And I’m definitely not going to stop seeing Lucas.”

“Then get good at hiding.”

“What, like you?”

He gives her a warning look. He might be subdued enough and miserable-looking enough right now that she’s fine with sitting close to him, but he’s never completely defanged. He looks at her skinny arm in her robe. She’d be nothing. Sinclair had weighed nothing. He could punt her like a football. The impulse to do it dies in the same instant as he thinks it. His stomach clenches warningly.

“Maxine.” It’s Susan. She holds the screen door open. “Billy. Your father’s up, he’s been called in for a shift. I made eggs.”

Neil is indeed already dressed for work and standing in front of the TV watching sports news when they follow Susan inside. Billy grabs his usual seat and tucks in. He might as well eat before he gets an earful. Susan’s flipped his eggs over, the way he likes them when he’s hungover. It’s not bacon and waffles but it’s like fucking ambrosia after the scouring taste of his own bile.

He only half-follows their stilted conversation about pageants while he eats, keeping an eye on his dad. Neil is muttering under his breath, so absorbed in the baseball stats that his coffee is going undrunk in his hand. Billy frowns. He knows all the forms of his father’s displeasure, including deceptive calm, but this is just unnatural. Susan repeats something completely inane about going to see Christmas lights, clearing her throat nervously when Billy doesn’t respond. He looks at Max. She’s acting weird too, eating her eggs quietly even though she normally has a shitfit if she can’t have Pac-Man cereal on the weekend. His eyes go again to the relaxed line of his father’s shoulders, his loose grip on the coffee mug.

Neil doesn’t know, he realizes, putting it all together. Neil doesn’t know he came home and woke Susan up, because Susan hasn’t told him.

It doesn’t make sense. He glares at her and then at Max. Stupid. His last mouthful of fried egg goes down like sandpaper, his gorge rising. He doesn’t want their pity. He doesn’t want them thinking they need to do misguided, treacherous shit like this; it will only complicate things. Susan and Max, they don’t ever need to be afraid of Neil, but they don’t need to give him a reason to make them afraid of him either. Not by muddying the waters. Not by being complicit. It’s a breathtakingly stupid move and neither of them seem to realize it, both looking at him like he’s supposed to play along with their little game. 

His dad has a shift, so he’ll have to leave soon; it will be easier to just get it out of the way.

He drops his fork onto his plate with a clatter, startling everybody. Neil’s gaze finally breaks from the TV. Max gives him the tiniest shake of her head, lips going pale.

“Maybe just make toast next time,” Billy says, sneering, watching Susan’s face fall, “if you don’t know how to fucking cook.”

^^^

He’d timed it right - gotten off easy. He scowls at his reflection in the mirror of the boys’ toilets, doing up his fly with unnecessary violence. He doesn’t feel like hot shit anymore. There’s new stubble on his jaw and lip and he still looks like a pussy, like a choir boy. He scrubs at his pink cheeks and pokes at the tender indigo mark concentrated in the corner of his eye where his dad’s club ring caught him. He can cover it with his sunglasses or he can play it off as a trick of the light if he tilts his head right and gets a curl falling there. It’s still annoying. His dad is usually more controlled, but Billy had puked on his work shirt halfway through.

The halls are buzzing with gossip when he steps out, laughter and hushed voices picking at the edges of the wound of his blackout. Lacey is nowhere to be found – isn’t waiting at his locker. He swaggers and leers whenever he meets someone’s eyes, but he finds himself picking a steady path out and away, escaping to his usual sanctuary.

“Some house you’ve got, Byers,” he says, when the other boy arrives a few minutes after him, wan in the red light of the dark room. “You’ve been holding out on me."  

Byers barely acknowledges him where he’s leaned up against the back wall, trying his best to look suitably gargoyle-like. He slips his satchel off his shoulder and starts getting out his camera equipment with tired resignation like always.

“I told you, you can’t smoke in here.”

Billy laughs twin streamers of smoke out of his nose. “And I told you to get a haircut that doesn’t involve a bowl but here we are.” 

Byers gives him a mild look under his bangs. “It’s dangerous. The chemicals…”

“I promise you,” Billy says, rolling his eyes. “At any one time, they’re the least combustible thing in here. What you got for me today?”

Byers grimaces. “Do we have to do this? I have submissions due for the yearbook.”

He shrugs. “I can rough you up first if you need the foreplay.”

Byers gives him a flat look. “Have you considered just asking to see my photos instead of being a gigantic dick.”

“Guess it’s in my nature,” he says, laughing. It comes off a little fragile, and Byers picks up on it, of course, dark eyes tracing over Billy’s face. He looks away after a moment, busying himself with his little potions: develop, stop, fix. Billy wrinkles his nose at the smell, watching over his shoulder as the images resolve in their chemical baths: a staged picture of the cheerleading team in a pyramid formation, a close-up of some chess club nerds wearing medals, Nancy Wheeler’s profile caught in the aperture of a library shelf, bracketed by books. 

“Please don’t touch those,” Byers says when Billy starts flicking around a pair of tongs. “Or those,” Byers says when he taps at the wet photo paper on the peg line. Billy rolls his eyes, shoving his cigarette back in his mouth to cover the sour smell of the room.

“So, what did you hear about the party?” he asks when he can stand the silence no longer. 

“What party?” Byers asks without looking up from his work.

“Don’t play coy with me, Joan Jett. Whatever one you weren’t invited to.”

Byers looks up, frowning. “Is this about Steve?”

Billy frowns right back. “Why would it be?”

Byers gives him a slow look before returning to fussing over his negatives. “I just thought you meant about the keg stand.”

Billy’s stomach lurches. He sees Harrington’s upside down face for a moment, eyes sliding over him disinterestedly; Lacey’s unimpressed face looming out of his reach, as elusive and as intangible as a bubble sucked away on a draft. He licks his lips and makes himself take a casual puff of his cigarette. “Harrington’s keg stand?”

Byers smiles wryly. “Isn’t that what everyone’s talking about? Here,” he says, holding out a stack of photographs. 

The first one’s of Max, at the dance. She looks like one of those sullen Victorian ladies, spooked and unhappy, her arms held how she would never stand normally. Susan’s going to love it. He shuffles through the rest of them. She’s there again, looking more relaxed in the company of her friends. Sinclair. Gums. The Frog. The kid he recognizes as Byers’ brother, Zombie Boy. He does kind of see it. The kid’s real pale, dark circles under his eyes like he’s old enough to go on a bender. Then again, all these midwestern kids could use some sun. 

“Nice duds,” Billy says sneeringly, tossing the picture of Byers' brother on the table. The kid’s vest is at least a decade old, too big for him.

Byers looks at the photo and then up at Billy warily. “Okay.” 

Billy can feel his temper uncoiling. He knows there’s the same thing inside them: a bitterness, an understanding of what can be endured. They’re both full of the same scar tissue. Where does Byers get off, acting like he’s learned something from it. Like he can control it. He’s so unperturbable, so fucking calm. It just makes Billy want to antagonize him.

He jiggers his leg against the table where he’s leaning until he has Byers’ full attention. “He looks like a real special kid,” he says unkindly.

Byers sighs, dropping his magnifying loop and looking at Billy expectantly.

Billy leers. “Father not in the picture I take it.”

Byers looks Billy up and down coolly, gaze catching on his black eye. “No. Yours is, I take it?”

Billy laughs, tonguing the corner of his mouth. “What, this?” He angles his jaw so the dim light will pick out the ugly blot. “Just some party favor. Nothing like the love tap you gave Harrington – or so I heard.” 

Byers twitches, looking down at the loop in his hands, something like shame flitting over his features. “Yeah, well. That was a long time ago. I was—we were, different people then.” He shakes his head. “What’s any of that got to do with Will?”

“Nothing. Just saying, I can tell he’s real  _different_.”

Byers lets out a slow breath, brow twitching into a frown. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, he is.” He puts the strip of negatives he’s holding down decisively, like he’s thinking of saying something. 

He can’t pinpoint it but Byers changes, suddenly looks...menacing, gaunt face hollowed out with lengthening shadows under the red light; a molecular shift from victim to something else, like a blue-ringed octopus flashing its rings. It’s not an invitation, doesn’t make Billy want to fight him, not like with Harrington. It’s a change that says: danger, do not touch. But then Byers just shakes his head, turning back to his work. “I’m glad he is,” he says, quiet and furious.

Well what the fuck is Billy supposed to do with that? He can feel disappointment tugging his mouth down at the corners. He’d been planning to blow off some steam, really rile Byers up about his shit music, but the conversation had gotten away from him. He feels mean. Not like, mean in a way he can apologize for. He feels ugly all the way down to his bones, like he’s something that should stay, here, in the dark.

He puts his cigarette out and shuts his mouth so Byers can make his pictures. It’s not an apology but it’s not being an asshole either, and that’s hard work because Byers ignores him for the rest of the hour, his turned cheek as smug as a Cheshire cat. Like he’s sitting on all of the answers to how to be a better person, working devotedly over his trays, his movements sure and steady.

Develop. Stop. Fix.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Carol knowing how to shotgun and letting Billy mansplain it to her gives me life.


	5. animals anyway (part two)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU for your comments my dudes. It motivated me to actually jump right into writing the basketball anime fic of my secret dreams. 
> 
> \+ I wrote a ficlet over on Tumblr if you're interested in Chapter One from [Steve's POV](https://harringroveheart.tumblr.com/post/185223640712/one-week-after-el-closes-the-gate-steve-stops). It's basically about Steve needing a hug.  
> 

 

Tommy and Carol aren’t in the cafeteria at lunch and there’s nowhere to sit alone that doesn’t look like he didn’t have a choice about it, so he heads outside. The sun is out, taking some of the sting out of the air, and most of the seniors have made their way down to the football field, sprawled all over the faded green and soaking it up like it’s Venice Beach and they’re not less than fifty meters from a staggeringly depressing tree line. He finds Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum parked halfway up the bleachers, Tommy with his head in Carol’s lap, and Harrington crunching away at an apple on the bench above them.

His first instinct is to pinch himself - make sure he hasn’t actually fallen asleep in the dark room, or that he’s not still upside down over a keg. It’s surreal, seeing them both with Harrington. He hadn’t realized until this moment that they were part of a matching set.

“Hey,” Harrington says when he spots Billy, firing off one of his shitty playboy smiles. Billy wants to punch the wayfarers right off his face. “There he is.”

He tucks his hands into his jacket pockets and starts trudging up the stairs. Harrington has the sleeves of his navy-blue jumper rucked up as high on his arms as he can get them, trying to get some sun, which is real aspirational of him. Billy doesn’t like it. He stops an awkward distance away, then realizes it makes him look like one of Harrington’s nervous groupies, angling for a prom date, so he comes closer. Carol looks up when his shadow cuts across her, squinting against the light.

He says, “You drop my car off Friday night?” Because he can’t bring himself to ask how he got home, certainly not in front of Steve fucking Harrington.

“You were  _wasted_ , man,” Tommy says cheerfully from Carol’s lap. “I thought we were gonna have to drop you off at emergency.”

“I thought I was gonna have to drop Tommy off at emergency after he carried you,” Carol says.

Tommy chuffs, shielding his eyes from the sun to look up at him. “Yeah, dude. You weigh a ton. You’re lucky Carol knows how to drive stick.”

Carol shrugs. “I mean, I figured it out. It wasn’t that hard.”

He bites down hard around a growl, thinking of Carol scraping along in the Camaro and fucking with his transmission. “Thanks,” he says, even though it feels like pulling teeth, and even though it comes out quiet enough that it’s lost in the obscene sound of Harrington jamming half an apple in his maw.

“Your mom was really freaked out,” Tommy says like he can barely suppress his laughter, ignoring Carol pinching him warningly. “She was  _so_  worried about you waking up the neighbors.” 

He feels queasy at the thought of it. Meek, fretful Susan in her hair-rollers coming out of the house in the dark, trying to pull him out of Tommy’s car. Trying to keep him quiet so they didn’t wake Neil. Trying to drag him off the lawn.

“That was Susan,” he says, scowling. “My mom’s in Malibu.”

Carol frowns. “I thought you said your mom was in Miami.”

“She was,” he says quickly. “They’re shooting on the west coast now. She goes where the work is.”

Tommy whistles.

“Billy’s mom’s a model,” Carol explains to Harrington.

Harrington frowns, looking Billy up and down. “Sure, I guess.” He chews thoughtfully at his apple, swallowing. “For what magazine?”

Tommy laughs. “Nothing you can buy without ID and a paper bag—ow,  _fuck_ , Carol.”

Billy smiles weakly. His mom was beautiful - more beautiful than Susan, anyway. And not a bitch. She always had plenty of boyfriends when he was growing up.

“Heard you took a shot at the keg, Harrington,” he says while Tommy and Carol are busy sniping at each other. “Felt like a walk down memory lane?”

“More like an exercise in humiliation,” Tommy chips in, wheezing. “ _Fifteen_  seconds!”

Fifteen seconds.

Billy releases a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. The thought of Harrington beating his record has been gnawing at him since Byers mentioned it, but…fifteen seconds? It’s pathetic, laughable. Billy’s seen kids with asthma do better than that. He tries to reframe what he remembers of the night with this new knowledge and it still doesn’t fit with what he’s seeing: Harrington relaxed as anything, holding court with his old friends like he’s made his grand comeback already. The school is buzzing with his name and no one seems to be paying attention to the small matter of Billy beating him by  _six whole seconds_.

Harrington makes a pained face. “It was  _warm._ I’m not an animal. And okay, yeah, Lacey didn’t exactly hold up her end of the assist.”

“Probably because she wasn’t holding your leg,” Carol says.

“Carol,” Harrington says warningly.

“Maybe she just wanted to skip to her fifteen seconds first.”

“Carol, shut up,” Tommy says, completely heatless.

Billy's heart skips a beat.

Lacey. Lacey and Harrington.

He swallows, trying not to let anything show on his face. Harrington didn’t beat his keg stand record, because he was busy stealing his girl. 

He rubs a hand over the pocket of his jeans, wishing he had his smokes on him, for something to do with his hands. Harrington’s probably watching him for a reaction. It turns his stomach to think of him with his hands all over her, with her purple lipstick all over his face. Everyone watching, making a fool of him. He grits his teeth to firm up his smile. He needs to say something before they think it’s getting to him.

“Didn’t know you liked your ponies broken in,” he says.

Tommy makes a sputtering noise but Harrington just stares back neutrally. “She’s not a horse, man.”

Carol clears her throat unsubtly. “Steve, you coming to Tina's party tomorrow?”

“Can’t,” Harrington says after staring at Billy a beat longer. “Told you, I’ve already got plans.”

Tommy moans. “You’re seriously going to ditch the end of year party to hang out with a bunch of kids?” 

“Yep,” Harrington says, lobbing his apple core down the stands. Figures, Billy thinks, that he doesn’t eat the whole thing.

Carol’s pouting. “You’re still coming on Saturday though, right?”

Billy frowns to himself, chewing on his tongue. There’s no party on Saturday that he knows of. His own weekend plans are to finish his assigned reading and take Max to the arcade so that she doesn’t drive them all crazy another week asking to go.

Harrington makes a face, sucking air through his teeth. “Only if Mr. Winkins lifts my lifetime ban from the bowling alley.”

“Bowling,” Billy says blandly without meaning to speak.

“You’re not coming?” Harrington asks, tone light, eyes flicking from him to Carol. It’s staged confusion, Billy realizes. A question he already knows the answer to but wants Billy to hear. “I thought you already invited him.”

Carol’s hand flutters up to tug at the roll of her turtleneck guiltily. “No, I mean. I asked  _Lacey_ , so…” So he’s not going to be her plus one.

“Hey, man. Come if you want,” Tommy says, trying to make it less awkward.

“Nah,” Billy says. He can’t imagine a worse way to spend his dwindling funds than on watching Tommy and Carol swap chewing gum while Harrington teaches his girl how to bowl a strike. “Not my scene. Don’t want to crash your double date.”

Tommy snorts. “I don’t know, could be more the merrier with Lacey,” he says. “Maybe you can take turns.” He perks up, stumbling onto a joke. “Hey, hey, Stevie. What’s Racy Lacey got in common with a bowling ball?”

Harrington levers the toe of his Nike under Tommy’s hip and pushes him off the bench, Carol cackling.

“Right,” Billy says, rather than sticking around to see them chumming it up. The bleachers  _thunk_  loudly under his boots on the way down, not quite drowning out the sound of their laughter. He blows right through a pair of kids making out in the aisle, scattering them, ignoring their annoyed protests.

“Catch you guys later,” he hears Harrington say from back in the stands.

He picks up the pace. Harrington still catches up to him before he can make it much further than around the corner, grabbing at his sleeve.

“Hey. Don’t worry about them,” he says, kind of breathless like the brisk walk winded him, like he’s never played a full quarter of basketball in his life. Billy looks down at the hand on his arm until Harrington removes it. “They’re just being assholes, man. Don’t take it personally.”

“Whatever.” It pisses him off, Harrington acting like they’re his to apologize for. He can’t quite shake the feeling that Harrington knows what he’s doing – working condescension in under the guise of being friendly. If he could go back to the moment Harrington tapped on the glass outside Tommy’s car window he wouldn’t have wound it down and let Harrington in, not like this.

“Look.” Harrington runs a nervous hand through the front of his hair so that it breaks up and droops into his eyes. “I’m sorry about Lacey. I didn’t know—”

“Relax, Harrington,” Billy says, cutting through his bullshit, flashing his teeth in a menacing smile. “Plenty of bitches in the sea, right.”

Harrington’s frown is disapproving. “Hey,” he says softly. 

Whatever he’s playing at, Billy’s not having it. He steps forward, drawing up to his full height. Harrington’s all limb. Billy knows from experience he goes over easy.

“Maybe I’ll go after one of yours next,” he says, letting Harrington do the math on which one.

Billy can tell the moment it sinks in and Harrington lets himself get angry, snatching the sunglasses off his face to glare at him.  

He looks like crap. He’s been wearing the sunglasses to hide it, Billy realizes. The same way Billy is hiding a bruise behind his. It looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks, his eyes exhausted and pouchy. Billy doesn’t remember him looking so worn-out the last time they spoke, but now that he thinks about it, Harrington had been moving slow, almost lethargic.

“Look, buddy—” Harrington says. But he doesn’t get to finish, because a baseball comes whistling past, hurtling right at Billy’s face. 

Billy flinches. Horribly and embarrassingly. It’s just that it catches him out of the corner of his eye - a dark blur. He cowers away even as the ball smacks into Harrington’s outstretched hand, appearing there like magic, like it was there the whole time, Harrington spinning and pitching it back just as quick, the motion so fluid and effortless it takes a moment for Billy to realize it hasn’t hit him, still recoiling from the blow that’s not going to come.

“Ball,” someone calls, a moment and a lifetime later.

“Great batting, Perkins,” Harrington calls out. “You aiming for a scholarship or just a strikeout?”

“Fuck you, Harrington.”

Harrington smiles back, waving like the world’s biggest asshole before turning back to Billy, shaking his hand out.

“Look,” he says again, friendliness dropping like a veil, face blank underneath, his easy tone all gone, “I know you’ve got this whole” – Harrington waves vaguely at him – “alpha dog thing going on. I get it. But there are  _things_  going on right now - things that would make your head spin, and picking a fight with you over some stupid high-school shit is not really a priority for me.” He pushes a hand through his hair again, a nervous tic, or maybe just wanting to show off his flashy watch. He laughs, bleak and humorless. “It’s not even in my top three.”

“What’s the third one?”

Harrington blinks at him.

He rolls his eyes. “You’re not that complex, Harrington. Getting Wheeler back. Pretending you’re Jonathan Byers. What’s your third priority? Renewing your country club membership?”

Harrington stares. Bingo. “That’s not…” His jaw tightens. “Screw you. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Uh huh.”

“Listen, asshole. I’m being as upfront with you as I can - I don’t need this. It doesn’t _matter_ to me. Just take the out.”

Or else _what_ , pretty boy, Billy thinks. He bends slightly to one side and spits, to make his opinion on that clear, turning to leave.

Harrington grabs at him again, tugging him to a stop, holding his wrist, too soft. Billy dashes his hand off, body shot through with sudden nerves, sick, darting a look around the sunny field in case anyone is watching. Harrington is holding his hands up like, whoa, my bad.

Billy’s lip curls at the sight of him. Harrington’s a mess. A fraud. Too tired and under-committed to be acting like he’s above this; a pale imitation of the challenger Billy wants him to be – one foot in both worlds and no contest at all. Not worth the six seconds it would take to outdrink him. He’s just a guy in need of a nap and a firm-hold hairspray. 

Billy gets a grip on himself. “You do whatever you think you need to, Harrington,” he says, drawing in close. “Shed your skin as many times as it takes to find something underneath you like.” Harrington’s eyes shutter, darkening, and it makes Billy’s smile harden into something crueler. “You get in my way, we’re going to have a problem. And that there is a fight we both know you’re not ready for.” He leans forward just to make Harrington tense, patting imaginary dust off his shoulder. “Priorities, right,  _buddy_?”

He backs up, content with the lost look on Harrington’s face. “Nice catch, by the way,” he adds. “Maybe they’ll let you try out for the team.”

Then he leaves, stalking back towards the school with the sun burning warm over his shoulders and his shadow stretched out in front of him like an arrow.

“Molting,” Harrington yells nonsensically after him. “It’s called molting.”

^^^

It’s not shorts weather. Billy glares at the back of Tommy’s knees while he jogs, feet sliding over icy patches where the rest of the team has already stamped the ground into slush. They track in and out of the gym, a lap around the court and then out the open doors into the freezing cold, down the sloping path to the field and back.

Billy phones it in, trailing behind (or in front, depending on who’s coming up on lapping him). For one thing, he wants no part in the little gossip circle that goes on in the pack of guys who are in the lead, and for another, the cold air makes him want to puke a lung up.

He calls it quits a lap short, trying to spit the taste of tar out of his mouth. Some of the quicker guys are already setting up for drills. He parks his ass on the floor and watches Parker dribbling a ball by himself while he relaces his sneakers and tries to rub the goosebumps off his cold legs. The older guy is apparently a shoo-in for this year’s scholarship. It’s heartening. Parker’s not particularly close with any of the other guys, doesn’t evoke team spirit, and yet he still got himself a golden ticket. So maybe it’s possible for Billy. He’d run the idea past Coach in as roundabout a way as he could, just feeling it out, asking about opportunities to play college ball. He knows he’s not the man’s first pick at team captain for next year no matter what the rumors are, but if there’s a way out of here on the table then Billy’s going to take it.

Tommy and the others finally make it back to the gym looking flush and ready. They go through the usual process of picking teams with Billy defaulting to leader of one side and Parker the other. They’re both at a standoff over who has to take Peterson when Coach’s door opens, Harrington following him out, in his uniform. 

Billy’s gaze drops to his sneakers, not really registering what his eyes are telling him. There’s no logical reason why Harrington would come back to the team now, just over a week out from break. He’s supposed to be stepping back. He’s supposed to be  _convalescing_. Harrington doesn’t even care enough about basketball to be back here yet - had seemed more interested in sniffing after Wheeler at the few practices they shared. He’s not supposed to be back, not now when Billy needs to start putting down roots with these guys. And Billy’s already got designs on annexing his locker.

_Maybe they’ll let you try out for the team._

He can’t possibly be that petty.

He looks at Harrington standing practically under Coach’s arm, at the tentatively awed faces of the team, at Tommy practically bouncing in place.

Harrington is…

Harrington is a  _dick_.

“Good news, gentlemen,” Coach says. Billy wants to kick something but there’s nothing at hand. “Your fearless leader here has made a miraculous recovery from being a lazy sadass and has  _begged_  for the honor of leading you to the bottom four himself.” Someone whoops and Coach shoots them a dark look. “Go easy on him. I don’t want the whole damn cheerleading squad in here again complaining about his face like last time." 

Billy realizes he’s grinding his teeth. The palpable excitement and relief from the rest of the team feels like a betrayal, like a knife twisting in his back. Parker’s the first to step forward, pulling Harrington into a friendly head rub like he’s not the most stand-offish guy in the whole school. The rest of the guys follow suit, cheering, catcalling, Harrington soaking it up good-naturedly. His eyes hook on Billy glaring at him.

“Go Tigers,” he says.

Billy’s going to cut his head off and slam dunk it into a trashcan.

“Alright, alright, save it for date night, ladies,” Coach says. “Let’s play some basketball, shall we. Who we got left…?” He spots Peterson. “Oh Sweet Mother of Mary. Okay, your choice, Hargrove.”

Billy looks between Harrington and Peterson, agonized. Peterson’s got the shooting prowess of a baloney sandwich. Harrington isn’t even really paying attention, too busy dodging all the welcome back punches from his friends.

Billy ends up choosing Peterson, only because the alternative is so unpalatable.

Coach claps his hands together, moving off to the sideline. “Okay! Skins and shirts, one-on-one, let's go!”

Parker’s already crossed the half court, holding his fist out for Billy to bump. 

“I’ll be—” 

“Skins,” Parker finishes, dry as ever. “We know.”

Billy ignores the jab, stripping out of his shirt.

The next twenty minutes are carnage. He’s not particularly on form but he’s  _pissed_. He’s up against Parker first and the guy couldn’t make it more obvious he’d prefer to be playing as a team with his buddy Steve. They rotate under the hoop for a turn at shooting on each other and Billy does his best to get an elbow in his face. About halfway through defending he realizes he recognizes Parker as belonging to the pair of arms that’d picked him up off the floor at the party, and then things get downright ugly. Parker’s a lot bigger than him and he takes the impact like a pro but Coach swaps him out, smart enough to predict an injury and mindful of Parker’s scholarship season. Billy shakes off his gruff warning impatiently. 

Miller is next, uncharacteristically quiet for once. Billy lets him try out some shady amateur move that he’s probably been practicing all week with his sisters, failing to pull it off when Billy proves to be a lot more muscle than he’d prepared for. He looks across the court and sees Tommy and Harrington playing keepy-off like a couple of sissies, barely playing serious. Miller uses the moment of distraction to slap the ball out of his hands, ducking to get around him. Billy gets his foot planted right where the little weasel is going to want to be and waits for his misstep to throw his weight into him, wrenching the ball out of his grasp and sending him sprawling. Miller’s such a wimp he grabs at Billy’s waist instead of going down clean, but he can’t find purchase, hand slipping right off of Billy’s sweaty back. He squeaks when he lands on his ass.

Coach Green moans.

“Harrington, would you  _please_  get on Hargrove? I can’t watch this anymore.”

“Sure thing, Coach,” Harrington says, jogging over, already so covered in sweat he looks like a weight-loss commercial. Billy can’t help the savage grin that comes out at the sight of his hair completely wrecked.

“Yeah, shut up,” Harrington says, eye rolling.

“Perm not holding up, princess?”

Harrington scrubs a hand over his forehead, trying to push sweat around with more sweat. “I gotta quit smoking.”

Billy licks his lips. “Not gonna make you a better player.” He bounces the ball between them, slow enough that Harrington can snatch at it if he wants to take the bait.

And again.

And again, knowing Harrington’s going to call his bluff this time, already shifting his weight back as Harrington drops down into play. Billy can't help but smile. Harrington’s a fucking menace of an opponent front-on. He’s got reach on him second only to Parker, which forces Billy low, seeking a quick-around. He tries to get through and Harrington blocks him, and then again when he cuts the other way. It’s about three seconds of play and the hardest he’s had to work all season.

Harrington’s definitely out of shape though, probably still feeling Billy’s boot-print on his ribs, having to think about his footwork and letting his dominant hand speak over the ball, telling Billy exactly where he’s going to be. Billy rips through his second screen and gets under the post in a textbook play, forgetting that it’s not their turn at the hoop. Peterson and his partner aren’t worthy of the spot anyway. They look like they’re playing fucking claphand at the top of the key, unable to get past each other.

Harrington fucks his topshot but can’t quite get his quick hands around the ball with enough conviction, Billy stealing the ball in close like  _mine_. Coach nips his whistle from somewhere on the sideline, telling them to get the hell out, but they’re way too locked down with each other to break.

Harrington has shifty eyes when he plays, always working, too reflective of what’s going on in his head. Everyone in Billy’s family has blue eyes – pale like Maxine or summertime sky like Neil – all pinprick pupil all the time: a language all on its own. Harrington you can’t tell so much, can’t get a read. Scared or excited, resolved or blank. 

Luckily, he’s real dumb. Definitely that kid that has to mouth along with the reading in class. Harrington’s big dark Bambi eyes slide over to Billy’s poised off hand, his mouth firms up like,  _fake right_ , and Billy knows he’s going to change his stance to put more weight in the way of a drive from the left. He’s enjoying himself too, Billy can tell, for now, in the moments he has before Billy atomizes him.

He slips in alongside Harrington’s guard before Harrington can read the double fake and fix his feet, spinning him out with a shoulder so that Harrington’s forced along his back where Billy doesn’t have to deal with his wingspan, bumping him back a few feet to get them both used to it.

Harrington gives good contact, present in a way that the other guys aren’t, secure enough in his form that he doesn’t need to be afraid of a foul, heavy on Billy’s hip to stop him from breaking. He’s made a tactical error getting Harrington front-to-back this close to the post. He can’t read Harrington’s tells like this, and he's too tall for Billy to twist and take a shot over him without space – and Harrington’s got legs to eat up any space he makes, no matter how fast he can make it. Getting around him from this position would take an assist or some next level footwork. But Harrington knows that too, butting up against him rough enough to stop him from putting his weight down in his heels, preventing him from gaining traction.

Harrington gasps out something like a laugh right by his ear. “Can’t plant your feet?” 

Billy gives him elbow, just a lick of it.

Harrington makes a small  _oof_  sound before he pushes back, just as hard, not even slightly deterred by the slip of slick skin, wet fringe flopping down and brushing Billy’s shoulder.

“Having fun?” Billy asks.

“Man. Put your tongue back in.”

Billy jostles him back, clips him in the ribs with a foul elbow, dribbles the ball under his own leg before Harrington can recover - so that their audience has something to remember - and takes a bank shot at the backboard which goes in slick as a wet dream. He's so cocky about it he could start dancing. 

“Enough!” Coach Green blasts his whistle. The other guys have dropped their individual games to cheer. “Hargrove, what the hell was that?" Coach yells. "Don’t you bring that fancy California shit on my court, this isn’t Hollywood. So help me god if I  _ever_  see that ball go through your legs again...” Billy and some of the guys start laughing.

“And Harrington, don’t you sit down, son.” Harrington ignores him, folding down onto the ground, panting hard and wincing. “What the hell were you doing while you were sat out these last weeks, other than laying around stuffing yourself like a Christmas turkey?”

Harrington groans, flattening out on the floor.

“We should do this again sometime,” Billy says, only a little winded, bracing on his knees. 

Harrington holds up a finger.

“Tommy—no, not you Kalkowski. Hastings,” Coach yells. “Please come scrape your captain up.” He turns and pins Billy with a look before he can escape ahead of the rest of the team. “Billy, come here, son. You heard of meditating? My wife says it’s supposed to help with anger.”

^^^

Coach chews him out for not being a team player and for trying to intentionally lame Parker. By the time Billy gets to the locker room, half the guys are on their way out. He hustles right past a knot of admirers – Tommy among them - orbiting around Harrington like he’s the belle of the ball. No one seems to care that he lost to Billy’s keg record and just got trounced at practice too.

“Hey, Billy, what’s the rush?” Peterson says from within the group. 

It’s the first time any of them have called him out on his routine. He’s paralyzed suddenly by indecision over whether to ignore the jibe or trust his gut instinct to put the guy down. He ends up settling on shooting him a disdainful look, reminding himself: Don't. _Talk._

He grabs a fresh towel and shucks out of his shorts, ditching his sweaty clothes in the hamper on the way to the showers. It’s crowded in there - exactly the reason he prefers to get in and out first. He ends up sandwiched in a corner shower between a couple of chatty cathies while he waits for the water to get hot, palming soap onto the back of his neck where his hair is stuck down with sweat and disentangling his earring from out of a stray curl. The room is clammy with steam but chill outside of the water. He tunes out the other guys and focuses on the inconstant water pressure as he rinses. It’s right on the edge of satisfying but never quite strong enough or hot enough to truly relax into. If he can ever afford his own place, he’s going to get a shower strong enough to grind him down to dust. And one of those wall brackets you can fill with shampoo. And he’s going to sit in it for an hour every day, morning and evening, getting pruney.

He’s getting low on soap, he realizes, making a note to ask Susan to get some more, the bar smoothing down to a sliver in between his knuckles.

“You got shampoo?” Tommy asks somewhere on his left. Billy opens his eyes and spits water, annoyed. “Okay, sorry,” Tommy says, hands up placatingly and then flinching badly when a bottle smacks into the side of his face, fumbling to catch it against his chest.

“Heads up,” Harrington says a beat later, sidling up next to him. Billy scrubs the last of his soap through his hair and roughly under his arms, closing his eyes and leaning into the spray so he doesn’t have to see so much goddamn orange.

“God, what is this?” Tommy asks, popping the cap on the bottle and smelling it. “Is this your mom’s?”

“Yeah,” Harrington says, snatching it off him and squeezing out a dollop before tossing it back without warning. This time Tommy catches it easy. “Why do you think her hair always looks so good?”

Tommy rolls his eyes. “You want?” he asks, shaking the bottle at Billy like it’s his to offer.

He shakes his head, no. No, he does  _not_  want. It smells like hay and honey.

“You’re awful quiet, Hargrove,” Miller says, edging in. It’s six guys to five shower heads. After a shared look the other two guys grab their stuff and dip out. Billy gives Miller a once-over he hopes conveys how little patience he has for conversating right now. He has the sinking feeling he’s about to break his no talking rule and it will be so he can hear that squeak again when he flattens the little punk. Miller doesn't take the hint. “Heard you made a pass at Steve’s girl.”

“Hey, easy,” Tommy says, looking annoyed.

“Way I heard it,” Billy says, ignoring Miller completely and making sure to catch Harrington’s eye, “she’s everybody’s girl.”

“Hey,  _easy_ ,” Tommy says, this time directed at him.

Miller giggles. “Not yours though, right? Heard the only cherry you got on Friday was your street.”

Billy can’t quite bring himself to smile it off. It feels like the tiles are tilting under him. There are only two people at school who know where he lives. It scratches at him, imagining them on the long drive back from his house, laughing it up. He tilts his head back, letting the insult wash over him the same as water, keeping his expression cool. So he’s trash. So what. “Don’t know what you heard, Miller.” He leans forward a little threateningly. “Only cherry at that party was yours.”

Miller turns red. “Yeah, well my girl said—”

“Move,” Harrington says, turning Miller’s showerhead on and stepping under the spray like he didn’t already have his own. “Man, you got a big mouth for a junior. This your soap?” He picks Miller’s bar off the stand, sniffing at it, making a face and chucking it over his shoulder. “Yeesh, that cheap shit gives me hives. Danny,” he calls, “you got any soap?”

One of the seniors turns around. “You flirting with me, Steve?”

“Flirting?” Harrington says. “No, just trying to turn you on. It working?”

Miller flushes even darker, gaze fixed on his soap sliding towards the shower gutter in a slick of greywater, picking up pubes. His mouth works for a moment: “…Hey.”

“Nah,” the senior, Danny, says, coming over and handing over his soap dish. “I like ‘em dumb, but not that dumb.” He slaps Harrington lightly on the cheek and then claps his arm as he goes, leaving a sudsy handprint on him. Billy hates it. Fucking small-town hicks. Someone did that to him, he would kick their teeth in. Harrington just smiles back, completely unrattled.

“Hey!” Miller says again. 

“Holy shit, you’re still here?” Harrington says dully. “Give me some space, man. Maybe come back later.” He makes a face at Tommy like, kids these days.

Miller leaves, giving Billy one last nervous look like he’s weighing up whether it’s worth getting beaten up to say what he’s sitting on. Billy gives him a look right back that says that it’s not.

Tommy and Harrington rib at each other for a bit before settling into the quieter business of actually getting clean. Their rapport chafes at him if he lets himself dwell on it. He doesn’t trust himself to say anything anyway. Keeps his mouth zipped so that he doesn’t give anyone the chance to shut him down like Miller. He needs more soap but he’s sure as hell not going to borrow any. The water's barely warm now and his scalp is starting to itch where the soap is drying. He fixes his eyes on nothing and works at it while the others continue shooting the shit.

Harrington hangs behind when Tommy leaves, lathering his shampoo through his hair with brisk, sure movements, messing it around and pushing it into a series of abstract shapes, seeming to enjoy himself. It’s like he’s at home, Billy thinks. Like he’s by himself, listening to whatever mainstream pop gets him going on the radio. It’s insulting, when Billy is right there - could get his hands on him inside of a second and crack his head open on the tiles so fast none of his little friends could save him.  

Billy watches him, trying to find something to say and simultaneously aware that this isn’t the place for it. Harrington has the upper hand somehow, just by being so completely at ease - just by ignoring him. Billy wishes he could get up in under his guard, right here, and elbow him again, get them both in a position he knows how to win.  

As if sensing his thoughts, Harrington opens his eyes, looking at him from under the spray, from under the wet spikes of his eyelashes, suds slipping over his shoulders.

Billy feels it just the same as an elbow to the solar plexus. He’s as clean as he’s going to get, he decides, reaching for his towel on its hook, covering himself, already shivering out of the warm water. He has five minutes until class and he’s not going to spend it having a staring match with a guy who smells like girls’ shampoo.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave me a comment if you're liking so far so I know wtf I'm doing!!!


	6. fear can't hurt you (part one)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD I now have a [moodboard](https://oepheliawrites.tumblr.com/post/185448071516/moodboard-for-maybe-there-is-a-beast-by) for this fic by the incredible and incredibly patient [@oepheliawrites](https://oepheliawrites.tumblr.com/) and the love is So Real. This is the pinnacle for me. I can ask for no more.

 

He sleeps like shit, dreams unspooling faster than he can catch, slick and confusing, dredged up on the fringes of his blackout like a tide. Dreams of being small again, too small to reach the kitchen counter without a chair, and the sound of a can opener, round and round and round. Dreams of being roadkill caught in the sudden sweep of headlights, and of being the tires too, matted with guts.

He lies there for a moment after waking, palms over his eyes, trying to press the thoughts out of his head. Trying to forget the taste of them.

It’s so close to the surface today.

It’s going to be so _bad_.

He almost can’t breathe with the sudden certainty of it, his throat seizing up around the feeling. He doesn’t want to be angry – so frighteningly uncontrollably angry –  but he is, or, rather, he will be. It’s drawing his skin tight over his bones, wiring his jaw shut. He gets like this, without rhyme or reason, like there’s a wound hidden somewhere on him that keeps popping its stitches and getting infected, and he never notices until the poison is already in his blood.

He opens his eyes. It’s still dark out, raining, his room heavy and quiet.  

"Shit," he murmurs, just to make sure he's really awake.

He could get in his car and go. He doesn’t have to walk into that school today. He doesn’t have to be Billy Hargrove. He could floor it the whole way out of Hawkins, go somewhere cheap and seedy where they play his music, where he could smoke a whole packet of cigarettes in a dark corner and no one would even look at him.

He’s already laughing at himself for thinking about it. This is the wild fantasy at the heart of him and it’s just some half-baked copy of another man’s escape plan, something poached from a Jack Kerouac story. He never lets himself imagine where it is he drives to, the bar that serves drinks to a minor, what happens after, when he’s finished the pack, when he gets up from the corner table.

He really does laugh at that, scrubbing the sound out his mouth with a rough hand and reaching for his cigarettes on top of his bedside table. He sucked at running away when he was kid too, never got much further than packing a slice of bread in a knapsack and hiding out on the fire escape until he cried himself inside, usually in the space of an hour. Billy’s not like Max, he doesn’t have anyone worth running to. Not anymore.

He sits up, kicking free of the warm sheets and smoking a cigarette to ease the tight feeling in his throat instead of thinking about all the same dull shit he can’t change.

Tina’s party can’t come soon enough.

He’s pent-up, he decides, has been for weeks. The more he thinks about it, the more sense it makes. He never got anywhere with Lacey. The girl before her had always been on her period. The girl before that had just been some unmemorable hookup in an unmemorable bathroom, too much teeth and annoyed when he put a hickey on her for her boyfriend to see.

He can breathe a little easier with the answer in front of him. He’ll have a girl on him by the end of the night. That’s never been too difficult when he puts his mind to it, and there’s still plenty of bitches in Hawkins waiting for their spin around the dancefloor. He just has to make it until then. He just has to keep a lid on it until the sun goes down, until there’s some pretty face, a rich kid’s bathroom, and his blood turned effervescent with the thump of music on the other side of a locked door.

All he has to do is outlast the clock on this powder keg of a day, and he’s practiced enough at that by now. There’s no real routine to it, no sure thing that works. It’s more like he just throws every obstacle he can come up with in the way of it, and sometimes it holds up for just long enough for him to outrun himself. 

He gets up and makes his bed with unimpeachably-neat military corners, opens the window so that the evidence of him smoking inside will clear out, and then hunts through the contained chaos of his drawers for a pair of shorts to work out in.

No one else in the house is awake, so he has to be quiet about setting up his bench press in the living room, the floorboards flexing under the old carpet. He misses his setup in the garage, but he can make do. He keeps an eye on the door at the end of the hall as he loads up, settling for light reps, curling until his biceps start to burn, listening to the first warbles of birdsong in the dark trees. When he gets his Walkman for Christmas he’ll be able to do this anytime he wants, with music as loud as he wants too. But for now, the muted clank of iron shifting on steel has a rhythm to it that gets him thinking about nothing in a way that works just fine.

By the time Susan creeps out of her bedroom he’s got quite a good sweat on. She seems a little taken aback by him being up so early, an irregular feature in her sad routine, but she keeps her mouth shut and gets on with making Neil’s breakfast: egg white omelet, half a tomato and baked beans. Billy’s made the same thing a hundred times back when it was his job, although, back then neither of them knew or cared what cholesterol was.

Billy can forgive Susan for being a lot of things, but getting in the way of Neil’s early heart attack is not going to be one of them.

The sound of the can lid prying open makes him pause for a moment, reminded uncomfortably of his dream. He shakes it off and pushes himself harder, until he’s breathing hard and brisk, the dumbbells rattling, sweat beading at his hairline and along the band of his shorts.

He’s finishing up when Maxine stumbles out of her room to sit in front of the TV and watch her morning cartoons. She’s barely with it enough to acknowledge the oddity of him awake, although she does eyeball his naked chest with disgust. She should count herself lucky. Billy’s been a paradigm of modesty since the Mayfairs moved in. He even sleeps with underwear on just in case he runs into one of them taking a midnight piss.

He’s in such a mood he can’t be bothered to dress nice; doesn’t bother with an earring or styling his hair after his shower, just throws a sweatshirt and yesterday’s denim on, forgets deodorant and dabs cologne under his ears and on his wrists and then on the back of his neck as an afterthought, since he’s going to get laid.

Maxine’s still not done in the bathroom when he’s ready to go. He does a lap and comes back, leans up against the door, flicking his keys around until his patience runs out (about ten seconds). He knocks.

“Max.”

No response. He can hear her messing around in there. He huffs, knocking again, a little harder. She really doesn’t need to be trying him like this. Even with the lassitude from his workout weighing his arms down he kind of feels like the best thing for him would be to put his fist through the nearest available hard surface, and he doesn’t need the excuse. He slumps against the door.

“ _C’mon_ , Max.”

“Just a minute.” She sounds odd, a little frantic.

He bangs once on the door, hard enough to be a proper warning, the flimsy wood reverberating in the frame, the palm of his hand stinging. “ _Now,_ Maxine. I’m not getting another tardy because you can’t do your shits at school.”

She opens the door, scowling, trying to slink past him. “As if you’ve ever cared about getting to class on time.” 

“Never too late to turn over a new— _what’s with your face?_ ” He grabs her elbow.

“It’s nothing.” She tries to tug out of his grip, eyes down, hiding behind her hair. There’s definitely something different about her, her face doesn’t look right.

He squints, a grin forming before he even fully processes what he’s looking at.

Her scowl deepens. “It’s just a little makeup.”

It’s not, just a little.

He starts laughing, low and mean in a way that makes her flush. What’s left of her face that isn’t already powdered pink starts pinking, bottom lip wobbling. “This is how the girls at school are doing it.” 

“Yeah,” he wheezes, “the ugly ones. _Christ_ , Maxine.”  

She tries to push past him.

“What, now you’re in a rush?” He gets in her way, boxing her in. She’s holding something behind her back and he reaches for it. “What you got there?”

“Nothing,” she says, backing up. “Billy.”

“Nothing?” he purrs. “Show me.” He makes another grab for it. “What is it, your application to clown school?”

She makes a break for the door, trying to dart around him and he reaches over and yanks it out of her hand with pure force.

“Billy!” she yelps. “Give it back!”

He sniggers, holding it away from her to look at it properly.

It’s a magazine. Folded open to a sheeny close-up of a girl pressing a kiss against a powder compact, an ad for some tween makeup brand.

It takes a moment to register what he’s looking at but when it does his good humor vanishes like smoke. He drops it as if he’s been stung, pages fluttering, hitting the tiles with a slap.

“Get rid of that now,” he hisses. 

She startles back at the expression on his face. “What?”

He slams his hand against the doorjamb, making her jump. “Get rid of it,” he says through his teeth. 

Her eyes widen fearfully. “But—”

“What’s going on here, Bill?”

He spins around, stomach plummeting, moving to block as much of the view of the bathroom as he can. His father is in the middle of fastening his belt, the narrow hallway putting them closer together than they normally allow.

His throat bobs, working until he’s confident he can speak.

“Nothing."

Neil doesn’t look even slightly convinced. He tilts his head to look over Billy’s shoulder, eyes sliding over the scene in the cramped bathroom and back to his face. He must see his pulse beating in his throat. Must smell the fear coming off Billy in waves.

He runs a hand over his mustache and jaw, like a pause, like he’s exhausted already by the dance they’re going to have to go through. The hand drops. “You going to tell me why your sister’s crying?”

“Dad,” he says, choked. “It’s nothing." 

“Move.”

Billy doesn’t move – can’t. He can’t let him _see_. His father’s eyes narrow at the uncharacteristic stubbornness and they stare at each other for a fraught moment, tension weighing heavy in the air between them, Billy’s pulse drumming in his ears. Neil pushes him aside. It’s just a hand on his shoulder but Billy still slumps awkwardly into the doorframe, legs stiff and uncooperative. He turns around, cringing already, unable to stop himself from looking, like a car crash.

Except, the magazine is gone.

He stares at the bare floor in shock, eyes darting over the tile, the bunched up shower curtain and the cluttered vanity, Max flushed and teary. She has her hand behind her back.

Neil’s flat gaze passes over the mess of the bathroom, catching on the sorts of things that typically spark at his anger like a flint on dry tinder: the comb full of hair, the spatter of toothpaste at the base of the mirror, the mat not hung up to dry properly, soggy with footprints.

His dad’s not stupid. Maxine’s hunched posture is so obvious. She’s withering under Neil’s scrutiny, shrinking down, so unlike herself it makes Billy want to shake her. But Neil won’t push it with her – not in here. Not when her suspicious behavior might be to conceal some mystery of feminine hygiene he’s better off not knowing.

They’re at a standoff.

Neil eyes Billy, the weak link.

His mouth goes dry.

“I’m going to be late for school,” Max says.

The lie hangs in the air as Neil keeps him pinned under his stare, drawing out the moment of decision while Billy swallows, trying to keep his face blank, heart banging around in his chest.

His dad looks around the bathroom one more time. Billy’s hanging so hard on his every tiny expression he can tell the exact moment he loses interest – if he ever had any in the first place, beyond putting a stop to the source of the interruption to his morning routine – the dangerous taut smoothness of his face relaxing into just plain tired.

There’s no relief in it. Billy’s still quailing on the inside as if he just took a hit to the guts. Reeling over how quickly his day almost went from bad to _really fucking horrifyingly bad;_  how insubstantial his efforts to control anything really are.

“Hurry up, then,” Neil says finally.

His hand lands heavy on Billy’s shoulder as he leaves, a paternal squeeze, like he’s concerned about his son frozen in place, rabbit-eyed and sweating. That’s what it probably looks like.

^^^

In the end they make it to their respective schools before first bell, but only because Billy stomps on the accelerator the whole way, refusing to look at her. 

He pulls into the middle-school lot and brakes like an afterthought, hard enough to jerk them both forward, staring out past the scrape of the windscreen wipers at the gray and brown school building, wishing he could just keep driving right through it.

“Billy.”

“Get out of my car, Max.”

He doesn’t like the way his voice comes out, flat and dark, like there’s something else behind the wheel. She’s smart enough or just familiar enough to read the warning in it, dashing the tears from under her eyes and throwing the door open to scramble out. She leaves a bunch of balled-up tissues on his seat, smeared with fuchsia. _Bitch_ , he thinks, flicking them off into the footwell, but it’s shaky instead of angry. He doesn’t want to be thankful to her – not over this, not when it’s her fault anyway.

She doesn’t even truly know what it was she was hiding behind her back just then. What Neil almost caught the scent of.  

It’s just a magazine, he thinks, furious with himself, with all of them. 

It was just a stupid magazine. 

He ends up staring after her as she hurries all the way to the main entrance, too far down under the surface to blink, face stiff. She makes it to the doors and Sinclair and the rest of them there waiting for her, but this time she turns to look back. Don’t bother, he thinks dully. She takes one hand off the strap of her bag and flicks an awkward half-wave at him. His fingers tighten on the wheel, creaking, mouth hardening into a sneer. _Don’t bother._

He wheels out of there all showy, like it’s going to make his day to impress a few thirteen-year-olds. The drive from the middle school to the high school is short but he guns it anyway, turning an Anvil track all the way up until the opening guitar riff is rattling his teeth, trying to vibrate the residue of his own fear out of his atoms.

It’s just six hours, he reminds himself. Six hours and he’ll be out of here and he’ll have booze, and a girl who wants him to screw her, and maybe even some shitty weed if Tommy’s guy is there. He doesn’t need to do anything to jeopardize that. He doesn’t need to burn it all to the ground just because he had a bad dream and woke up feeling _sensitive_ about it.

He’s almost put himself back together - almost - when he pulls into the lot and sees Harrington’s car parked in his spot.

He pulls up behind it, hand hovering over the handbrake. The BMW is shiny as a cherry, dark windows dewed with rain.

It looks like an answer to something.

He lets it wash over him, letting it slip under his skin, set his blood to itching. The Camaro idles underneath him, engine thudding, urging him to do something about it.

Someone beeps their horn. Billy looks at them coolly in the rearview mirror before moving off. There are no spots left in the seniors bay so he parks in the next bay over with the rest of the juniors. He kills the music and sits for a moment, ears ringing, listening to the engine tick and settle, the drum of rain on the roof, trying to ignore the slow wind of his temper in his chest.

It’s no good.

His limbs are already pricking, anger stirring warm under the cold stone of his skin. He can’t stop his mind from turning to Steve Harrington; the upside-down violence of his dream. How good it would feel to get his hands in all that leonine-perfect hair and just pull pull pull until it comes out in his hands.

He wants a fight and there’s only one person in this shithole who can give it to him. And he just parked his stupid fucking car in Billy’s spot.

 ^^^

People don’t exactly scatter, but they get out of his way once they’re close enough to see his face. It makes him feel slightly more in control, even as his feet drive him forward, hunting for something he’d be better off avoiding.

The halls are filled with a sort of boisterous energy he should be able to enjoy: kids shaking out raincoats and umbrellas, talking excitedly about the upcoming break, ready to party. He should be there among them, in the center of them. He should be leaning up against a locker with a girl fussing over the state of his hair. It should all be his but it isn’t – still belongs to a guy who can’t even care enough to fight for it, who can’t even hold his breath for fifteen seconds. He doesn’t need it like Billy does – needed it, this morning.

He tracks Harrington to the senior block toilets just as the bell for first period sounds and the halls start to empty. Lacey is waiting patiently outside with her giggling friend.

“Billy,” she says, surprised. 

“Billy,” the friend says in a different tone, body going lax against the wall.

“Hey,” Lacey says more sharply when she sees he’s not going to stop, getting in his way, her eyes darting to the closed door of the boys’ toilets. Oh, that’s real cute.

“Move.”

She does a good job of not flinching at his tone. Her mouth sets into a stubborn shape. Unlike Max her lipstick is perfect, shiny burgundy like the lacquer on Harrington’s car, the bow of her upper lip starkly drawn and clean. Harrington hasn’t been on her yet. Or maybe he has and she’s just reapplied.

“Don’t,” she says. “He’s tired.”

Billy’s laugh is as dry as dust. “Yeah, me too.”

She looks at him, searching for something but whatever it is she doesn’t find it. “Get Tommy H,” she says to her friend.

He takes a step forward and she comes with him. He bites his lip at her, looming close. He can see the moment she catches the scent of him – the sweat and the too heavy cologne, her nostrils flaring. “Coming in?” he asks, voice just as dead and as mean as in the car with Max. He usually saves this for breaking up with the clingy ones, but fuck it, she’s already washed her hands of him; it’s not like he needs to keep the act up around her anymore. He leans even closer. “Don’t act shy now,” he says, hand stroking up past her shoulder to press against the door. “From what I heard, you’ve spent plenty of time in here." 

Her face shutters. “Sure, Billy. Want to do this here?”

“I’ll do this anywhere, Lacey. See” – he tilts his head, baring his teeth in the biggest smile he can manage, something just a little better than a sneer – “I’m easy too.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” she says. “Leave him alone, Billy.”

“No can do. Me and the king have business. You going to get out of my way now, or am I going to have to make you?”

She tenses at that. He can see her trying to figure him out, asking herself whether she should call his bluff. He doesn’t bluff. Doesn’t need to. He barks and he bites - it’s all the same to him, always ends with blood in his teeth. He doesn’t hit girls but he doesn’t need to hit her to hurt her.

Turns out he was right about her being smart though, because she glares, but steps aside.

“Better run and make sure your friend finds someone for when I’m done,” he says as he pushes past her, muttering, “maybe someone with a mop.” 

She shouts a warning that gets cut off by the door swinging shut on her annoyed face.

Billy sniffs. Harrington’s in one of the three stalls, head poking up above the partition where he’s standing on the toilet and smoking out the window. There are two other guys at the urinal.

“Scram,” Billy says to the closest one, moving quick to block Harrington into his cubicle, hands up on the frame so he can’t close the door. Harrington finishes tapping his cigarette out on the ledge, twisting around on his throne to look down at him. He’s wearing probably three different layers of polo shirt.  

One of the guys books it without even zipping up properly, but the other one lingers. 

“Steve?”

“Take a hike or you’ll get the same,” Billy says, not bothering to look.

Harrington raises his eyebrows, shaking his head just slightly like, really? He breathes out a sigh through his nose, looking over Billy’s head to give his little devotee the okay to flee.

“Do we have to do this right now?” he says once the door has swung shut again. “I don’t really feel like dealing with your complex today.”

“Too bad you picked a fight then, huh.”

Harrington’s brow pinches. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You parked in my spot.”

He’d chewed over the line in his head the whole way here, condensing it down, meaning for it come out like a reckoning, something to really make Harrington shit his pants. But he didn’t account for Harrington standing on top of a toilet, looking down at him, and it comes out kind of small and ridiculous.

Harrington makes a bland face. “Seriously?”

Billy’s grip on the stall tightens, rattling the frame. Harrington is less intimidated by it than Max was, probably because of his height advantage. He’s going to kick Harrington’s ankles from under him in a second if he doesn’t get down from there.

“Here’s the news, Hargrove,” Harrington says, stepping down, carefully, close enough to be a threat and distanced enough to be contemptuous about it. At this angle Billy can see that he really is tired, neat enough, but worn at the edges. He’s so pale under the fluorescent lighting he’s like an old photograph in sepia tones. “It’s just a parking spot,” he says, laying on the accent all mid-western darling. “But if it means so much to you, all you had to do was ask.”

Idiot. Playing by the wrong rules again. Thinking Billy won’t call his bluff. He should have stayed up there, crawled out the window when he saw Billy coming.

Billy snarls a hand in his collar and yanks, so hard his knuckles pop. Harrington stumbles into him a little but otherwise stays loose and uncooperative, putting in only enough spine to stay upright, to keep their faces apart, nostrils flaring.

“You grow some balls since last time, Harrington, or you just got a short fucking memory?”

Harrington snorts, looking away like he’d rather be doing something more interesting, like the fringe of his hair isn’t trembling under Billy’s hot breath. Maybe he’s underestimating how much Billy woke up wanting to hurt someone. Or maybe this is just his way of getting what he wants too, making Billy do all the dirty work.

“Maybe I’m just not in the mood,” he says, eyes half-lidded.

Oh, yeah. He’s a real fucking princess.

Billy grins. “I am. In the mood.” His grip tightens as he draws Harrington closer, grin widening. “So you gonna put out or am I going to have to romance you?”

He doesn't wait for an answer. Uses his grip on Harrington’s collar to throw him around, slamming his shoulders hard into the cubical. Harrington’s head bounces off the wall with a thump, a shocked gasp coming out of him, shoes squeaking on the tile as he tries to get his legs back under him, too clumsy and too slow.  

Billy huffs out a laugh. “Take a little too much of mommy’s Prozac, sweetheart?”

Harrington’s eyes widen. He’s spooked now, trying to put some space between them, prying at Billy’s hands in his shirt. “Get the fuck off me." 

Billy shoves him harder against the wall, just to show him he can. “What’s the matter, Harrington? Can’t get it up without an audience of little kids?” He shoves him again. It’s just like basketball. He just has to find the right combination to make Harrington play. Anticipation sparks along his skin, in his chest. 

Harrington shakes his head, sneering faintly. “I told you, I don’t have time for this right now. There’s things out there—”

He shakes Harrington again, reminding him: _here_ , hissing, “There’s nothing out there that’s worse than this right now, I promise you.” 

Harrington’s eyes go big, searching for a moment. “I—” His mouth seals up, angry at himself. “You don’t know shit,” he says. Billy can see the fight draining right out of him, can’t keep the desperation off his face as he watches the guy wilt, even as Billy shakes him again. “Look somewhere else for your fix, man.”

No. _No_.

“No.” He lets go of Harrington’s collar with one hand, screwing his fingers hard into the center of Harrington’s chest, a parody of that night, right where he knows there’s a fire burning, the same as in him. “No,” he says again, meaning: it’s right here, give me _this_ , let me have _this_. He licks his lip, eyes scrolling over Harrington’s face, looking for some other vulnerability, an in. Already he can feel the adrenaline slowing to a stop, curdling in his veins, clammy cold settling over him like a shell. If he closes his eyes he might just wake up now, back in his bed, ready to start this day again.

It doesn’t make any sense. There’s nowhere for the guy to go. Billy’s got him cornered and caged. He has to fight his way out. He has to hit back.

Hit me, he thinks, face coloring. Harrington’s looking at him real tired, mouth ticked up on one side like he finds the whole thing distasteful. It’s…déjà vu. Or something he’s dreamed before. 

Mistake. The whole thing’s a mistake. He’s not going to get what he needs. Harrington only makes it worse.

He’d have been better off to go to Byers, he sees that now. Byers is like a blue-ringed octopus, a bite smaller and deadlier than what Billy needs, but Harrington is like a big fat deep-sea shark. Billy keeps reopening the same wound, putting more and more blood in the water, and Harrington just—won’t take the bait.

Billy lets him go. His fingers ache, still clawed up. 

They’re at an awkward distance now. Too close to not be fighting. It’s Harrington’s fault, Billy thinks miserably. They could have had something good and bloody, but Harrington spoilt it, like a fumbled shot.

The wind outside surges, blowing a gust of sharp rain in through the open window, spattering over their jacket sleeves.

“You’re a real tease, Harrington.”

“Yeah. This new for you? Someone not giving you what you want?”

Billy bares his teeth. He doesn’t even get to want what he wants.  

“And what about what you want, huh.” He clicks his fingers under Harrington’s nose. “You even awake in there? What’s got Steve Harrington so scared he has to sleepwalk through his day?”

“Man, just leave me alone.”

“That's hysterical. Wake up and look around you. You are alone. You are _so_ alone," he says, almost laughing because it's true.

He’s so close he sees the moment Harrington absorbs it and changes, his eyes sharpening, his lips parting with a small noise. Billy's heart speeds, catching in his throat. “That why you spend your nights playing make-believe with my stepsister and her little nerd friends?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harrington says, jaw going hard. 

Billy’s breath rushes out of him shaky and excited, hands fluttering up between them, unsure, but ready, settling on the warm cotton of Harrington’s shirt. 

“No. No, I think I do, Harrington." He tugs him closer, an idea gaining traction, smelling weakness. “The world got scary on you? Things out there change a little too fast for you to keep up? It’s natural you’d want your old life back.” He smirks. “Old friends, old girl... Shit, the best parking spot in the whole damn school.” He crows, smiling, tongue stuck on the tip of his eyetooth. “Nice and easy and safe. Like putting on old clothes. I bet they still fit just right, huh.”

Harrington tenses up under his hands, going quiet. The look on his face…it’s  _perfect_ , gets right into his bloodstream.

Oh, yeah. This’ll do.

“You know,” he says, stepping back a little to look Harrington up and down. “I see it now, what all the fuss is about. You really are something special.” He reaches to touch the swoop of his hair admiringly but Harrington jerks back, wary. “King Steve.” He laughs. “Oh, man. You know, I think I’m gonna remember you when I get out of here.” He drops the smile, turning serious and intent. “Hell, maybe Byers and his girl will too _._ Maybe those kids you hang out with, once they’re gone.”

Harrington’s mouth flattens into a hard line, eyes glassy, wounded. “Fuck you,” he says quietly.

“What’s the matter, Harrington? I’m giving you what you want, aren’t I? You can have it all back. Your friends, your spot…team captain. I wouldn’t take that away from you.” He gets in close, right in Harrington’s face. “These are the best years of your life after all.”

A small tremor goes through him. He’s awake again, suddenly, really looking at Billy like he’s something that needs to be dealt with, dark and livid. Billy lights up with it.

Yes.

 _Yes_.

“There he is,” he says excitedly.

He slaps Harrington in the face.

It’s a gentlemen’s tap, nothing that will leave a bruise, just something to get them started, an invitation, an easy out for Harrington: he didn’t start shit, he didn’t have a choice. Anything to make sure that spark in Harrington’s eyes doesn’t go out again. Anything to keep Billy’s blood singing.

Harrington’s even nodding, just slightly, like he gets it, struck cheek turning red.

“Okay,” he says, low and vicious, rucking his sleeves up like a priss. “Okay. Do me a favor though – don’t cry like a bitch this time.” Then he punches Billy right in his already bruised eye.

“ _Fuck_!” His shout echoes sharply off the tile. His eye – the whole side of his face – explodes with pain. It’s like he’s been shot. He stumbles away, the heel of his palm jammed reflexively against the socket, fetching up against the bank of sinks, half-blind.

“I’m gonna fucking end you, Harrington,” he snarls, face burning white-hot under the streaming tears. There’s a throbbing glittering black spot superimposed over where he guesses Harrington is standing. His hands fumble over the sink for purchase.

“Looking for a plate?” Harrington asks drily. 

Billy laughs, manic, pushing forward.

“Yep, okay,” Tommy says, appearing between them. He has an arm outstretched in Billy’s direction only, like he trusts Harrington to stop on his own. “Enough, man.” It’s so non-committal, impossible to say which one he’s talking to.

“Get lost,” he snaps.

“Yeah, Tommy,” Harrington says, all dry, eyes like blackholes. “Get lost.”

“Steve, don’t be an asshole,” Tommy says. “Carol’s going to kill me if I let you get beat up again.”

Billy laughs. He doesn’t give a shit – not about Tommy or his loyalty. He’s probably been there the whole time, waiting in the doorway to see which horse to back, maybe enjoying the show, or maybe just shitting his pants, too scared to interfere. It doesn’t matter. Tommy's in his blind spot now and he can only see Harrington: his big dark eyes, wet under the lights, his open mouth. He’s looking at Billy like he can’t see Tommy either. Billy's heart is beating in his neck, his teeth sharp in his bottom lip.

“Looks like your rescue got here in time,” he says, even though he’s still breathing fire, feels like he could get his fists against Harrington’s skin and still want more.

“Or yours,” Harrington says. “You don’t look so good, buddy. Rough night?”

Billy leers, running his tongue along his teeth animal-like.  

“Shit, Billy,” Tommy says.

He sniffs, rubbing the back of his hand over his mouth like he can rub the smile off. He probably looks psychotic; eyes watering. He should have brushed his hair. The searing white bathroom tile is still bouncing with black stars in the corners. He's not going to get any more of what he wants out of Harrington, not now with Tommy here. But he has enough.

He points to his eye. It hasn’t puffed up but he’s going to have a grade-A shiner later, something to feel around the edges of at night and remember: Harrington can be got.

“Now I owe you one, Harrington.”

Harrington gives him a filthy look. “Promises, promises.”

Outside, the wind howls, shrieking in through the cracked window, rain drumming harder against the side of the building. One of the light panels overhead flickers and all three of them stare at it until it stabilizes.

Billy snickers, heading for the door. He makes sure to clip Tommy’s shoulder on his way. Just so he knows how inconsequential he is, how presumptuous, to think he could ever get in Billy’s way.  

“Looks like it’s gonna be a wild night, Harrington,” he says in parting. “Pity you won’t be a part of it. Have fun playing babysitter.”

^^^

It’s almost enough to get him through the day. 

He makes it all the way to last period, buzzing, his thumb pressed snug into the bruise in the corner of his eye as he stares at the slick of rain on the window, replaying the hungry look in Harrington’s eye, like he wanted to dig his fingers in and pull him apart like a rotisserie chicken. King Steve.

He’s still high off of it when the bell goes, drunk almost, piling his books up dreamy and rote, drifting after his classmates out the door.

Something’s wrong.

The halls are deafening, the narrow space echoing with shrieking laughter as the first boom of thunder rolls overhead. Lockers slam, people rush past him, chattering, excited. He can’t hear their conversations but his ears prick at the one word on repeat. 

In the midst of the pandemonium and movement he spies Tina, a bubble of unhappiness. She’s talking furiously to some other girl, trapper keeper clutched to her chest, face dour, free hand slicing through the air sharply.

He already knows, deep down, but he reaches out anyway, snatching at the nearest arm.

“What’s going on?” he asks. It’s some thick-bodied guy already pink in the cheeks.

“You don’t know?” the guy says, walking backwards, pulling out of Billy’s grasp, too excited to stop. He makes a whooping sound, blending into the crowd. “Party at Harrington’s tonight, dude.” He whoops again, throwing a fist up. “Party at Harrington’s. Long live the king!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I split this chapter as well - it was super fucking hard to write Billy sad, scared, angry in that order. Also, look, it’s not explicit in the text, but _Uptown Girl_ by Billy Joel starts playing any time Billy walks into a room and sees Steve Harrington.
> 
> Thank you so much you lovely sweet angels who comment, you're actual fucking gold and I want to kiss each and every one of you. 
> 
> [Tumblr @harringroveheart](https://harringroveheart.tumblr.com/post/185650409767/maybe-there-is-a-beast-harringroveheart)  
> [Playlist on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ovtygtvvCjF0vvOXKRY2j)


	7. fear can't hurt you (part two)

 

It’s not even that nice of a house.

Billy’s seen nicer.

He drains the last can of Old Style and crushes it, throwing it out the window with the rest of the six pack. He’s been around Hawkins twice already, taken some sharp corners, played chicken with a sixteen-wheeler. Anything to avoid Loch Nora and the steady trickle of cars pouring into Harrington’s fancy cul-de-sac as it got dark.

But he’s here now, he thinks bitterly, blowing out an annoyed breath. 

There’s no gate, no gold-capped fence, no gargoyles. Nothing to keep Billy out except for a long walk over the dark drive and a closed pair of doors lit up like the answer at the end of a hall at the end of a dream.

He scratches at his chest, contemplating driving back to the Fair Mart for more booze first.

He’s not a pussy. He’s crashed bigger better parties than this, with meaner hosts. He’s used to arriving alone too, it’s just that he’s fucked the timing of the thing now. He’s sat too long in his car. Been seen my too many partygoers as they pull up, as they drift in and out of the house. He keeps waiting for someone – Tommy, Carol, Harrington – to come out, following a rumor to see if the Camaro is really there, parked on the curb with Billy Hargrove inside it smoking his way through next week’s gas allowance.

He’s already kind of drunk too, but not in a way that he needs. It just makes him worse, surlier, beer churning in his empty stomach. His skin itches under a patina of flop sweat: too much thwarted adrenaline in one day.

A pair of junior girls walk past, peering in through his window. He stares back at them vacantly when they catch sight of him, slow-eyed, not bothering to smile around his cigarette almost burnt down to the filter. They wave, one of them tottering closer, but her friend grabs her by the strap of her purse with a sharp word, a warning, tugging her away.

He exhales smoke, watching them stumble up the drive passing a flask between them, fluffing each other’s hair. One of them turns to look back at his car, hopeful. It reminds him of Max, of the stupid half-wave that morning, after he’d scared her. Stupid. Stupid like every other girl, even when she should know better. Even after she’d done the smart thing and sunk a baseball bat into the floor not two inches from his nuts.

The girls have made it inside, the big blood-red front doors clapping shut - darkness again. Maybe if he goes up there and rings the doorbell right now Harrington will be the one to answer and they can cut right to the chase.

“Fuck it.” He can’t sit still thinking about it any longer. 

He yanks his keys out of the ignition and pushes his way out of his car, ditching his cigarette butt, headed towards the lighted doorstep. The rain’s dried up for now but the air still smells electric with the promise of more. He tramps right up the steps, his boots cutting dark tracks over the Harringtons’ silvery lawn, and pushes through the front doors like he belongs.  

He doesn’t.

 _Christ,_ Harrington’s loaded.

If he didn’t know already, he knows now. He’d know it in the pitch dark. Somewhere in this house is a state-of-the-art sound system and it’s pumping out synth pop with a crystal clear edge, loud enough to make Billy’s heart trip into its rhythm.

The entrance is packed with familiar groups of people; the same crowd as Halloween but with different masks. A few heads turn at the opening of the door and the ensuing bite of cold air.

“Holy shit,” someone says, which is fair.

He shoulders his way into the thick of them quick-smart (like hell he’s going to be caught stood around in the doorway like he’s casing the joint), just a glimpse of lofty ceilings and a long master staircase, nice art on the walls, not movie posters or kids’ stuff.  

The party itself is already on the messy side of full swing, the sort of atmosphere where one too many key players have taken themselves out of circulation, moved on to some other party with an older crew or just found someone to sneak away with and screw in a spare room. There's a girl crying in a huddle of her friends, a guy slumped too heavily against the wall. Some red-faced junior stumbles urgently past Billy with his hand clapped over his mouth. 

So, okay, yeah, it was probably a decent fucking party and he shouldn’t have spent the last hour in his car inventing reasons why it wouldn’t be sad if he parked out at the quarry and taught himself how to skim rocks. He has a limited time to enjoy it now. Someone will have gone running to Harrington already. His friend the Chief of Police is probably already on his way to scrape Billy out of the party like oyster shit.

Whatever. He doesn’t need much time, just enough for people to know he was here. Just enough to get a girl to look past his black eye and the mean set of his mouth. There’s plenty of pretty ones left. Plenty of desperate ones too. They eye him up and down as he slides past, wending his way towards the noise, skirting the edges of larger groups.

He locks eyes with a few familiar guys from his grade but they don’t reach out to him. He makes them uneasy when he’s not smiling. Tommy and Carol usually help with that, softening his edges, stupid enough to stay in his orbit and ply him with booze and flattery until he’s indulgent and approachable and fun.

He ends up bullying his way into a game of beer pong being played on top of an enormous dining table. As a Hargrove he’s genetically predisposed to abhor drinking games – drinking is its own sport – but there’s no keg here that he can see, and playing along seems like the fastest route to free booze.

It still takes some finessing. Even half-way trashed he’s too good of a shot. He manages to down a few cups of sour beer by martyring himself, drinking for his less coordinated teammates and their girlfriends, spitting the ping pong ball back across the table to a chorus of disgusted boos. A girl sidles up to him and presses a bottle of Stoli into his chest, waiting for him to take it before she smooths a hand over his chest, like it’s an even exchange. He’s indifferent to vodka, but it will have to do. He takes a swig and doesn’t make a face at the dry burn of it down his throat. Lets her hand be his center of balance while he tips his head back.

She says something. The music is too loud and she’s too short. He shakes his head - she's interfering with his turn at the game - but he lets her tug him down so she can shout into his ear. Whoever she is she’s wasted, her voice thick as honey:

“There’s no _punch_.” 

“There’s no punch,” he repeats slowly.  

“Tina’s place always has punch,” she whines. “Who throws a party with no punch? Typ—typ….”

He holds the bottle away from her grasping hands, scanning the room. “Typical.”

He has a pretty reliable sixth sense for rooms with Harrington in them. He’s not here, but the living area is a big space, open, surrounded by glass - overlooked by the second story landing, he realizes.

“Your car got heated seats?”

“No,” he says, eyes on the balustrade above. It makes him uneasy. There’s no one up there, but there could be. “Hold this,” he says, giving the girl her vodka back.

He grabs one of the beer pong players, mouthing a name. The guy points in the direction of the sliding doors.

To hell with it. He needs air anyway.

Harrington has a pool. He’d heard rumors of course, but seeing it is something else. It’s lit up, glowing blue, steaming in the cold air. It doesn’t look like the sort of place where a bear eats a girl, but given the wary distance people are keeping around the perimeter it must be true. There’s no fence before the darkened tree line. He supposes it’s not inconceivable something - something big and hungry - could wander out from the woods for a dip and a snack.

Harrington himself is easy to spot. He’s the only one sat down, relaxed back in one of his pool chairs, sunglasses on like he’s Corey-fucking-Hart. No Lacey. Tommy and Carol are with him and not with him, standing a little ways off, watching. He’s not entirely sure why until he gets closer.

Wheeler. And Byers with her. 

And now that he’s really looking, Harrington isn’t exactly relaxed so much as he’s reclined and shitfaced, a stack of empty cans on the ground beside him. Which explains why Wheeler looks pissed.

“…better than this,” she’s saying.

“Well, maybe I’m not,” Harrington says.

Wheeler shakes her head, ignoring Byers’ hand on her arm. He’s holding a red solo cup, which is just the most bizarre thing Billy’s seen all day. He’d have put money on him being the type not to drink. 

“I don’t believe you,” Wheeler carries on saying. “How can you sit here - _here_... _knowing_ what happened?”

“It’s my house, Nance. I live here, in it. Next to it. Y’know.”

“And, so, what? You’re just going to be like _this_ now?” She gestures at the party like, this, the party, people dancing, the pool. Like it all amounts to something lacking. 

“Well, what would you like me to be, Nancy?” 

Wheeler’s face screws up, curly ponytail swinging from side to side as she shakes her head with astonishment. “More than _this_.”

Jesus. What a bitch.

“Nancy,” Byers says. “C’mon.”

“No. No, I want to know why he’s acting like this. Like…like…”

Harrington could be looking at her any kind of way from behind his glasses. “Like what?”

“Like before,” she says, furious. “Like an _asshole_. Seriously, Steve. What’s wrong with you?”

_What’s wrong with you?_

Harrington just laughs it off - a bitter-sounding thing, more like a grunt. “Before,” he says slowly. “Yeah... You know, I kind of liked it? Before. When I could sleep. When I didn’t have nightmares. When I wasn’t afraid of my next-door neighbor's dog. Yeah, _those_ were good times.”

“Steve,” Byers says, sharing a look with Wheeler. “Hey. We get it.”

“Thanks, man,” Harrington says in a perfectly polite tone of voice.

“ _Steve._ ”

Harrington’s head lolls against the pool chair. “Fuck, _what_ , Nancy? It’s just a party.” He waves the beer in his hand around. “Time was you wanted one, remember? I’ll be Good Steve tomorrow. Hey, shit, maybe if I get drunk enough _Jonathan_ can take me home.”

“You—don’t take this out on him! And that’s not even nearly the same thing.”

“Why, because I’m bullshit and you’re not?”

Her face hardens up, mouth pinching into an unhappy line.

“Nothing to say?” Harrington says, real bitchy. “It’s okay, I get it now. Really. I am bullshit.”

“Steve—”

“No. No, no, no, no. You think I’m bullshit. You think I’m bullshit and all of Hawkins is bullshit and you’re not because you’re going to college.”

Billy looks around to see if anyone is going to step in and stop this train wreck, but only a handful of people near enough to overhear seem to be paying attention, and Tommy and Carol are hovering awkwardly on the fringes, iced out earlier perhaps, or just waiting for things to get more heated, more entertaining.

“No,” Wheeler says, stepping closer, serious. “I think it’s bullshit because we both know there’s more _out there_ than just, I don’t know, being cool.”

Harrington snorts.

Wheeler’s eyes narrow down to slits. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Harrington shrugs. “Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”

Billy’s breath escapes him in a rush of almost laughter. It’s so conceited it’s impressive. Kind of shocking. He’s moved close enough that Tommy has caught sight of him and they lock eyes, sharing a moment of understanding. 

Wheeler has gone still, mouth pinched tight. Then she starts nodding. “Okay. Okay, I want to leave,” she says to Byers, taking his hand. “Let’s go.” 

“Enjoy your date.” 

Wheeler rounds on him. “There’s no date, Steve!” she hisses. “We canceled. Joyce called the restaurant. You _left_ Will.”

Zombie Boy? 

“He’s…” Harrington actually sounds a little guilty. “He’s with the others. I walkied them. It’s not like he’s alone.”

“I’m sure he got home fine,” Byers says firmly, trying to be diplomatic. “My mom’s just...still kind of sensitive about stuff like that. But, Steve, man, you told them you’d take them to the movies. He didn’t bring his bike.”

“Yeah, well. I didn’t feel like spending my night with a bunch of kids.”

“Sure, of course, I get that,” Byers says. “Just, don’t make promises you can’t keep with him, okay?”

“Whatever. It’s not like he’s my responsibility.”

That gets Byers frowning, annoyed, finally. “What do you know about responsibility?”

Yeah, Billy thinks, wincing, already stalking across the damp pavement. Yeah, he’s had enough of this shitshow. 

“Your pool party fucking blows, Harrington,” he says, snatching the cup out of Byers’ hand and downing the last of it, ignoring Wheeler’s white-hot glare. 

“It’s not a pool party,” Harrington says. 

“Well, not with that attitude,” he says, ditching the empty cup and reaching back with a casual arm to shove Byers over the edge.

Byers only manages a gasp before he hits the water. Turns out he’s an actual pushover, no resistance at all.

The surrounding talk and laughter dries up sharply at the sound of the splash.

For a long moment it’s quiet, quiet enough to hear the first faint spit of rain on the pavement, water slopping up over the sides of the pool, bubbles hissing.

Byers breaks the surface spluttering, coughing, his face barely visible through the thick steam. 

No one’s laughing yet. They’re watching Billy, nervous and expectant, a little eager; hot breath in the frosty air. They’re looking to Harrington too, for what to do next. 

It’s Carol who makes the first move. Wheeler’s still caught in the motion of turning to glare at him in disbelief, mouth shocked open—then Carol is at her elbow, shoving her in hard. 

That breaks it.

Someone yelps as they’re pushed from the other side of the pool, and then too many kids to keep track of are jumping in, falling in, pushing each other in, the pool swarming with them. A plume of water from someone’s cannonball sprays up and spatters over his boots.  

The sliding door is yanked open, releasing the full blast of the music along with a stream of howling partygoers. He almost smiles as he shoulders his way through them. It’s the sort of chaos he likes. Just the wrong day, wrong place, wrong soundtrack. He’s not getting in that water for anything less than Van Halen, and no one is daring enough or stupid enough to push him.

He pauses on his way out, in the entrance, eyeing the foot of the stairs where a half-assed barricade of chairs has been toppled to one side.

He could just leave.

He _should_ just leave. His eye is starting to ache again and the thought of trying it on with some girl, even one of the sloppy, desperate ones, suddenly seems more exhausting than it should be. He’s just drunk enough that if he leaves now he might be able to forget how he woke up when he puts his head on his pillow, and just sober enough that he should be able to make it home if he stays off the main roads. 

No way is he drunk enough to play this game with someone who knows full well what guys like Billy Hargrove get up to if left unchaperoned in their nice big houses. 

He takes the stairs, slow, like if it takes him long enough he’ll come to his senses. 

Upstairs is just as sleek and flashy as the rest of the house, the slanted rafters lit up with the warm glow of the living room below. He peers over the edge at the handful of people still inside, strewn over couches, playing a game in a circle on the floor. Any of them could look up and see him, but they don’t, which seems like permission enough. He moves on after one last glance at the sliding door to the pool. 

He finds Harrington’s parents’ room first. Doesn’t bother with the light switch, the wedge of light from the hall illuminating a king bed in the center of the room, stark and sharp-cornered as a piece of art. Strangely unmade on one side, he notices.

The next room he looks in is a home office, more lived in. Tracks in the carpet where the chair has been wheeled from computer to printer to fax machine behind a big L-shaped desk. There’s a bunch of diplomas on the wall but no embarrassing photos of Harrington on Santa’s lap. Disappointing. 

Goldilocks is at the end of the hall.

And is a slob, he realizes, poking the door open and catching a whiff of pizza leftovers and damp laundry. No need to turn on the lights - they’re already on. A lamp on the desk and each bedside table too.

Nightmares huh. 

He glances around. Preppy plaid wallpaper, matching curtains, a couple of posters. The pizza smell is coming from a greasy box on the floor underneath a butterflied biology textbook. There’s a pile of clothes kicked half under the bed, and another stuffed haphazardly into the desk well, as if Harrington only realized last-minute he might end up with company up here. The bed is unmade - maybe because his parents aren’t home, or maybe he’s just allowed to live like an animal. Either way, the sight of the tangled sheets makes Billy’s skin crawl.

A ticking noise draws his gaze to the window: rain tapping against the glass, just lightly and then harder, and then in a sweeping rush that sends up a wail of laughter and shouting outside. 

He stifles a sigh, plucking a bottle of expensive-looking whiskey off the dresser. 

Harrington has an ensuite bathroom, same as Tommy, and the lights are on in there too. He pushes his way in, regretting it when he catches sight of himself in the mirror. He looks like hammered shit: hair frizzy and wetted down from being in and out of the rain all day, long and straggly over his shoulders, eyes raw.

He leans closer over the sink. The shiner’s come up nice. Looks like someone rolled their thumb in ink and pressed it just into the corner of his eye. One for the price of two. 

“Don’t tell me. Looking for a blow-dryer,” Harrington says from the doorway. 

Billy doesn’t bother looking at him properly. He doesn’t need more than a glance. No sunglasses, been in the pool. Wet. He sets the whiskey down so he can pick up one of the pill bottles scattered on the vanity, squinting at the label.

“Hey, asshole. Want to keep your hands to yourself?”

He manages a half-smile. Not really.

“Depends," he says, tilting his head so the light will catch on Harrington’s handiwork. “You come to collect?”

Harrington sniffs. “Don’t you think it’s kind of poor form to beat someone up in their own home?”

“Never heard of home-field advantage?”

A dry laugh. “This whole town is my home field.”

“You—” he starts, the words dying in his throat. He’s right, of course. He has _everything_. But he's not supposed to just _say it_. It's so plainly arrogant, such a shock Billy forgets himself, turning to look. 

Harrington’s leaned up against the door frame, loose-limbed and princely, soaking wet, like a goddamn nightmare. Jeans, shirt, sweater, shoes. Hair. Eyes. The wet sweep of his fringe is dripping a steady bead of water onto the tile between them. He's cocking an eyebrow at Billy like, yes? 

Real top-tier asshole behavior. 

Billy _hates_ it. Has to shove his tongue hard into the side of his cheek to stop from smiling. Harrington sees anyway.

He looks tired, just barely amused, maybe a little cock-eyed. About three rum and cokes past Dutch courage, if Billy had to guess.  He's staring, he realizes, feeling somehow ten times drunker. 

“Did you come up here to piss me off, pretty boy?”

Harrington rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’m having a real great day. Just wanted to end it finding _you_ in my childhood bathroom.”

Billy shrugs. “You could always leave.”

“It’s _my_ bathroom.”

“You asking me to get lost, Harrington?” he quirks his head. “Where are those upper-middle-class manners I’ve heard so much about?”

“Guess you knocked them out of me.”

He huffs out a laugh. “You got a smart mouth for someone who can’t throw a decent punch.”

“I don’t know,” Harrington says carefully. “Looks pretty decent to me.”

Billy flushes, bruised eye throbbing. He’d forgotten it, somehow, for a moment. 

 _Oh, you think this is all you? -_ is what he wants to say. But he can’t. It’s different with Harrington than with Byers. He won’t get it. 

Harrington takes a step forward and Billy tenses, but it’s just to grab a towel off the rail. He strings it over his shoulders, balling it up on one end to press under his dripping chin. Thunder grumbles somewhere outside, deeper, louder than the music and the sound of rain, rolling to a deafening crack over their heads. Harrington tilts his head to watch the bathroom light humming with current. 

Harrington’s a fucking dumbass, mouthing off when he’s too tired to offer up a fight. Billy licks the back of his teeth, thinking. He’s not going to hit him. Not now, when Harrington thinks he has him figured out, thinks Billy is a windup toy for when he feels like being bad. Good Steve, he’d told Wheeler. I’ll be Good Steve tomorrow. Well, Billy doesn’t get to choose – didn’t get to choose to wake up feeling like there’s saltwater burning a hole in him today – and neither should Harrington.

It wouldn’t be satisfying anyway. Harrington looks pale, about as substantial as cellophane. And Billy feels so brittle that punching him would still probably make his whole hand splinter apart. 

“Okay then,” he says. 

Harrington eyes him mistrustfully. “Okay...?”

“Okay.” He shakes the pill bottle. “I’ll save our next dance for when you’ve had your beauty sleep.”

Harrington’s tone is doubtful. “You… _aren’t_ going to hit me.”

He steps a little closer, just to test the boundaries of Harrington’s composure. Harrington does an admirable job of not reacting, like always. Billy’s close enough he can smell the beer on his breath, the chlorine on him, on the towel. He has the faintest pink mark of a scar at his hairline. Billy knows he just promised not to hit him but his heart is already squeezing behind his ribs at the sight of it, knuckles tingling with the memory. 

“Not unless you ask me nice.”

There’s a moment where Billy thinks he’s really going to ask him to do it. Pretty please. But then he just sort of—snorts.

“H’okay.”

Thunder rips overhead again, closer this time - a percussive _boom_ \- and the lights blink. Billy frowns up at the domed ceiling fixture and when he looks back down Harrington is staring at it again, flat-eyed. 

He runs his tongue between his teeth. “Scared of the dark?” 

Harrington gives him a fed up look. There’s no more laughter or splashing from the pool. People are shouting, rounding each other up, the sliding door banging open and closed an annoying amount of times. The music pauses, subsumed by the dull roar of rain as someone switches out the tape. 

He supposes it’s too much to hope for something with a guitar solo but he keeps his ears pricked anyway: Hazy synth opener. Slow pulse of drums. He makes a face. Foreigner. The sentiment is apparently shared by Harrington who twists to slump more fully against the doorframe, muttering, “Great, great, that’s just. Great.”

“What’s the matter, Harrington? Someone find your Valentine’s Day mixtape?”

“Please leave.”

He snickers. Like hell he’s going out there now. He’s unlucky and he’s tall. He’ll probably get struck by lightning on the Harringtons’ lawn and turned into an ornamental coat-stand. He grabs up the bottle of whiskey and sits his ass purposefully down on the edge of the bath, cracking the seal and taking a showy slug even though it tastes like horse piss. 

Harrington holds out his hand for the bottle, eyebrows raised expectantly. 

Billy ignores him. “Get your own.”

“That is my own, asshole. You’re drinking my Christmas present.”

Come to think of it, the seal did have a kind of ribbon on it. 

Billy takes another draught, sucking his teeth after disapprovingly. “Your Christmas present could use a mixer.”

That startles a weary sort of laugh out of Harrington. Billy’s not quite sure how he feels about it. He’s not really a funny guy - isn’t used to being laughed at. It's over quick enough though, before he can puzzle out whether or not he needs to get offended. Harrington smears a hand over his face and plucks a cigarette from behind his ear.

Billy’s lips part.

It’s not a cigarette.

It’s a joint. A neatly rolled joint, smooth and even, a little damp from Harrington’s hair but otherwise professional work. 

“Hey,” Billy says, before he even thinks it through. “Give me some of that.” 

“Yeah,” Harrington says with the joint clenched between his teeth, distracted, looking for his lighter, “right.” He pats himself down - chest, hips -balancing precariously on the doorjamb as he struggles to get a hand in the back pocket of his wet jeans. He frowns, coming up empty.

Billy smiles until he has his attention, fetching out his own zippo and holding it lazily between his knees. He flicks it on and snaps it shut. Flicks it again.

Harrington lets out an exasperated sigh, hunching forward so Billy can reach up and light it. He lets Harrington get it started, just the edges of a cherry between his cupped hands, before stretching his fingers out for it in a clear demand. Harrington rolls his eyes but passes it over. 

He’s almost too eager to get it in his mouth, licking his suddenly dry lips. The first draw is good. Fantastic. Dense and skunky, barreling around in his lungs as he holds it. He spares a glance at Harrington and sinks down onto the floor, tips his head back, eyes falling shut, spangles playing over the inside of his lids. He exhales out. And out and out, really registering just how good it is. It’s—

 _Really fucking strong_.

He coughs. Smothers it, or tries to, throat clamping, but something catches sharp and dry in his windpipe and he—

—coughs again, messier this time, smoke choking out the corners of his mouth. 

“Smooth.”

“Get fucked,” he rasps, giving up and coughing hard into his fist.

“You alright there, Hargrove? Need a shotgun?”

Billy glares as Harrington leans over to take the joint off him. His eyes are watering. “Not if you were the last mouth in Indiana. What the fuck is that?”

Harrington laughs. “Welcome to Hawkins,” he says, taking a drag, thoughtful. “The weed is alright.”

It’s more than alright; it’s fucking toxic, the best reefer he’s ever smoked.

He doesn’t cough the second time around, rolling his tongue around the taste. It makes all the smells of the bathroom leap into sharp relief: salty chlorine, the hay-honey smell of shampoo residue still in the tub, potpourri in a little dish on top of the toilet tank. What kind of guy wants to look at rose petals when he’s taking a slash?

He can already feel the beginnings of a high swimming up from the base of his brain, his body loosening, fizzing at the edges. Harrington is definitely laughing _at_ him, he decides, watching him from under his eyelashes. When he figures out if it pisses him off or not there’s going to be a price for that. 

Somewhere between his third and fourth toke he must look sedate enough that Harrington slides down to the floor too, tugging the towel around his neck, one leg stuck out across the tiles dangerously close to Billy’s junk. Billy’s not an ambush predator, but even so, he feels the compulsion to grab Harrington’s sneaker and yank, just to see what happens.

Harrington smokes like a pornstar or a grand old society dame, showy and expert. Billy looks at his own hands, at the stiff, stubby fingers his dad gave him, no good for picking at guitar strings. There’s engine grease under one of his nails.

When he looks back up Harrington is watching him, blue smoke crawling over his top lip. It’s easy to miss, but there’s a smirk there. 

Harrington catches him staring, breathing out a slow cloud of smoke. The scent of it is so dark and grassy it gets his dick hard. He reaches over and takes the joint back, sucking at it greedily, short and sharp, getting as much smoke into him as he can. 

“So,” he says. “How come you’ve got this and Tommy’s weed is for shit?”

“Tommy has good weed,” Harrington says, tilting his head back against the door to look at the ceiling absently. “He can just be…” He grimaces. “A dick.”

Billy frowns.

Harrington looks at him. “He’s fucking with you.”

Oh.

“Don’t take it personally,” Harrington says, tone careful. “It’s a small town.”

It rattles him more than he’d like to admit, the idea of Tommy pulling one over on him, amusing himself. He doesn’t think of Tommy, or Carol, or any of these hick kids, as getting bored. Not since he’s been here to shake their little lives up. He isn’t the type of new kid you’re supposed to mess with.

He takes a hard drag, paper burning, his lungs filling with dry smoke, waiting for his spine to re-soften. Harrington doesn’t seem overly fussed about Billy hogging it, eyes lambent, patient. Fucking rich kid. Billy smokes even more, just to be a prick, slotting it back in between Harrington’s lax fingers only once it dawns on him that he might be getting a little too high.

Harrington has the barest smirk on his face _._

_It’s a small town._

He settles self-consciously back against the tub, doing his best to not look like his head is floating off his shoulders.

“So...” He licks his lip, tentative. “What else do you smalltown kids get up to? Other than tipping cows and fucking with out-of-towners.”

Harrington gives him a long look - long enough that Billy wants to suck the words back into his mouth. But then he shrugs and says, “Depends on the company.”

Billy nods, wishing he could take the joint back if only to have something to do with his hands. 

“What about California?” Harrington says, taking a draw. 

Billy wishes he could keep his mouth shut.

“No cows,” he says. “Parties were better, always had good weed. And coke, y’know.”

“Uh huh,” Harrington says, his interest dwindled and lost. Billy is surprised to realize he can feel it, the moment of its passing, a moment of cold sobriety in the warm haze of his high. 

Jesus. Jesus, poor _Tommy_.

“I…” he scrubs his hand over his hot eyes. “You could hear the ocean at night.” It’s a lie. They moved plenty but never anywhere close to the beach. “Waves at night and shit,” he says, kind of lame. He needs to zip it. Weed makes him talky like a bitch. 

Harrington’s nodding. “We stayed in Santa Cruz for a bit one summer. My parents were...There was nothing much for me to do, just, walk around the boardwalk, I guess.”

Billy can’t help but be interested. It’s weird, thinking of Harrington and him being in the same state at some point, on opposite ends of a beach, maybe. A dozen questions bottleneck in his throat and he’s grateful none of them actually make it out his mouth. It’s not like Steve Harrington is the right guy to pour his guts out to, bitching about how homesick he is for a place that hasn’t noticed him gone. 

“You really afraid of the dark, Harrington?” he asks after a while. 

Harrington doesn’t look away from the ceiling, watching the lazy curl of smoke, just barely nodding. 

He’s got two moles, like a snake bite, just under his jaw. Such an obvious flaw.

You shouldn’t tell people stuff like that, Billy wants to say. 

“Good thing I’m here then,” he says, waiting for Harrington’s eyes on him, smiling, rusty at it, maybe kind of fucked up. He waggles his zippo. “I got a night light.”

Harrington frowns, looking at Billy strangely for a long moment, then he shakes his head. “You are such an asshole.”

“Hey. Don't knock it ‘til you try it.”

Harrington snort-laughs smoke through his nose and starts choking on it which starts Billy laughing too, loud and ugly.

The sound of it echoing off the brightly-lit tiles makes the bathroom feel smaller, closer, boxed in and cut off on all sides by rain. It makes him feel the way the cab of his car does sometimes. Like he could go anywhere. Like they’re not in Hawkins. Or like he doesn’t have to hate it. 

He can’t seem to stop, laughing until he’s winded, his whole chest vibrating with it. Harrington’s weird asthmatic nose-wheezing keeps setting him off again until it’s almost fucking painful. 

They let the conversation die out after that, both of them too high and too tired. It’s...comfortable. It shouldn’t be. It won’t be, tomorrow. He doesn’t let himself imagine it. It’s probably a new day already anyway, which means school in a few hours. He zones out to the drum of rain on the roof and realizes after a while that Harrington is crooning along tonelessly to himself and the music has been off for some time.

Billy sits and Harrington fucks up every verse of REO Speedwagon’s hit single  _Can’t Fight This Feeling_ and then ashes the joint; a punctuation mark.

Party’s over.

^^^

He has to catch himself on the wall, twice, as he zig-zags down the hall and into his room, his footsteps abominably loud on the thin carpet. He should have taken his boots off outside but it’s raining too hard and his fingers are clumsy from the cold and also he fell over when he leaned down to try.

“Billy?”

It’s just Max. Hovering in his doorway in her dressing gown, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. She looks him up and down wearily as he moves around his room, fumbling his keys and wallet out of his pockets, peeling his jacket off. His boots come off with two too-loud thumps. He smells ripe, but maybe if he hangs his jeans on the windowsill the cold air will make them wearable tomorrow.

He stops with his hand on his fly, bugging his eyes at her like, _well?_

She bugs her eyes right back.

“ _What_ , Maxine?”

Her brow furrows. “Why are you smiling?”

He reaches up to his face, surprised, touching over his mouth.

Oh.

He digs his fingers in hard either side where his cheeks ache. Thinks of Tommy saying, _Shit, Billy._ The way he smiles when he’s blooded and alive. He must be scaring her.

“I’m high as hell, Maxine,” he says, turning away. “Go back to bed.”

He feels her eyes on him a moment longer before the door closes.

He strips out of his shirt and jeans and climbs under the covers, shivering, dizzy and drained. He can still taste the sweet tang of smoke, smell it on his hair and the tips of his fingers as he runs them over his mouth, waiting for the feeling to fade.

Outside the thunder is low, bated. Rising and receding, almost like a tide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks lovely people for your comments.


	8. any more than a dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait. Let's do this thing.

 

“Out,” he says as they jerk to a stop at the turn off for the middle school, the Camaro punching a draft into the early morning fog. The school building and the water tower are just dim outlines somewhere beyond the murky expanse of parking lot, the impatient rumble of the V-8 the only life for miles.

“Chop chop, little lady,” he says, pretty hilariously, when she doesn’t move.

Max crosses her arms and slumps further into her seat. “It’s so early,” she gripes. “There’s no one else here, Billy. What if the doors aren’t even open yet?”

“What, like you never picked a lock before?” he asks mildly, tilting his head to admire the lie of his hair in the side-mirror. He woke up late, later than Max for once, and spent most of his morning shower dry retching against the tiles, but all in all his hair’s turned out pretty great.

“What _is_ that?” Max asks exasperated.

He sits back to look at her. Her nose is wrinkled. “What?”

“That _song_ ,” she says. “That song. You were singing it last night too!”

He wasn’t. He doesn’t even like that song.

He lolls his head to eyeball her. She’s got something on her lips, sheeny-shiny. “You’re looking very _nice_ today, Maxine. Sinclair gonna get lucky?”

Her face crumples. “Can you be more _gross_?”

He sticks his tongue out. Yes. “Out you get, Strawberry Shortcake, time’s a-wasting.”

He takes one hand off the wheel and punches the seatbelt buckle undone for her, but she’s still not getting out, looking him up and down suspiciously.

“Are you on drugs?”

He gives her a flat look like, _No, are you_?

She doesn’t look convinced.

And, okay, his mouth still tastes like Harrington’s richie-rich-boy weed. And somehow, even under the heavy clay of his hangover he still feels kind of high. But the only thing he’s on is the aspirin someone – Susan, probably – left out on the kitchen table for him. His dad was already gone when he finally did get out of the bathroom, but early indicators are good he didn’t notice Billy stumbling his way into the house at bullshit o’clock. 

Max is still watching him. He clears his throat dramatically, making a show of looking at his watch.

“Okay, okay, jeez,” she grumbles, tugging her bag out of the footwell. God, she’s slow. She kicks the door open in a way that she knows he can’t stand and gets out, holding the door so she can stoop to glare at him. “Why do you have to be so early today, anyway?”

 _Modern warfare_ , he thinks.

“Choir practice,” he says with a grin, and leans over to yank the door shut.

She scowls at him, voice muffled through the glass. “Stop using my shampoo or I’m telling mom.”

He revs a warning, just to make her stumble back so he doesn’t actually take her toes off, and then gasses it, the Camaro tearing away with a roar, shooting down the long undulating road towards the high school like a bullet, scattering mist and leaves. He checks his rearview mirror and, yep, she’s still there on the scrubby strip, flipping him off. What a little psycho.

There are only a handful of cars in the high-school lot – nerds with extracurriculars and kids with early-morning detention. And Billy, swinging into Harrington’s parking spot at speed, neat and professional.

Early bird gets the worm.

He chuckles to himself, fishing around in his glovebox for a smoke and shoving it between his lips. First period isn’t for another half hour, but he has rattlesnake patience, can’t even tally up the hours upon hours of his life he’s spent self-entertaining in his front seat waiting for Max to get done at Pac Man or whatever-the-fuck.

He fiddles idly with the radio, dialing from end to end, flipping past dull early-morning talk-radio voices, Christian honkytonk, local news. His daily ritual of hunting for a track he probably won’t hear until he works up the courage to rob the RadioShack.

He buzzes the window down to flick ash off the end of his cig, sucking in the damp-cold air, letting it quell the lingering dregs of his hangover. It’s nice – the quiet lot with the mist burning off the asphalt, the smell of wet leaves.

The radio host is announcing some rock ballad that’s not his taste, but he doesn’t bother changing the station.

^^^

It takes just about forever to find Harrington’s locker. He thought it would be easier, stand out more somehow, but it’s just a normal locker in the middle of a row of senior lockers, identical to his own and with exactly the same angled slot that he’s able to cram the envelope through. He darts a quick look around before he does it to make sure no one with too big of a mouth has seen, but the halls are still relatively empty. Just some band geek standing there, frozen in place like he’s just witnessed a mob hit and him and his clarinet are going to have to go into witness protection. Billy winks at him and goes back to wiggling his present through the gap, snickering at the dull clank it makes when it lands inside, smoothing his hand over the grate in farewell.

He’ll have to bum a light until he can buy a new zippo at the gas station.

It’s a long walk back to his own locker. He has to chew the smirk off his bottom lip the whole way, thinking about the flummoxed look on Harrington’s face when he finds it.

_To Harrington, in case the boogeyman shows._

First period is in the library and he makes it to class just moments before the teacher walks through the door, throwing himself into a seat beside Wheeler with a smirk, making sure to knock his knee into hers. She turns around pointedly, intent on giving him the full force of her glare.  

“You have some nerve.”

He laughs, enjoying her scathing once-over and leering back. “Eyes up front, Wheeler. Unless you’re looking for a new boyfriend.”

She shakes her head, turning back to her note-taking. “You’re trash.”

“Yup,” he concedes. Mrs. Wright is making the rounds from desk to desk, seeing who has and hasn’t started the reading already, back turned. He takes the chance to lean a little closer, close enough that one of Wheeler’s flyaway curls moves under his breath when he talks. “But at least I can swim.”

The big guy across the table snickers nastily. Wheeler’s face puckers like she’s giving serious thought to spitting on him to test his theory.

He continues, “Loosen up, sweetheart. You know what they say: all’s fair, yada-yada.”

“You are so—” She cuts herself off with a frustrated noise, picking up her pen with forced stiffness and pretending to work as Mrs. Wright ambles past them. Billy hasn’t even bothered to get his books out of his bag and she hovers until he does, slumping back into his chair and clapping the dog-eared text onto the table with a bang. She nods approvingly before she moves on, as if she doesn’t know he’s going to spend the whole class at the window sharpening his pencil down to a nub.

“Why Jonathan?” Wheeler says under her breath once the teacher’s out of earshot. “You never messed with him before.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I could give less of a shit about your bargain bin boyfriend.”

“Then _why_?”

He thinks on it, drumming his fingers on the ugly yellow book cover. “Rules of the jungle? Guess I’m kinda like my man Jack killing Piggy.”

A narrow-eyed look. “Maybe you should actually read the book, Billy.”

“Maybe,” he says, snatching up an overlong 2B. “But duty calls.”

The pencil sharpener is behind the stacks, tucked into a private corner of the building with a view of the parking lot, and Mrs. Wright won’t come looking for him no matter how long he takes. He does most of his quality napping in here.

He stares out the window while he works. The sun’s come out properly now, radiating off the glass and through the blinds onto his face and hands, cutting a square of warm light in the muted gray of the library. He watches absently as a few more cars pull into the half-empty parking lot. Seems like the entire senior year’s suffering from the same collective hangover, he thinks, yawning. Pussies. If Coach has them run drills later there’s an even chance he’s going to blow chunks, but otherwise he’s doing a standup job of keeping his own hangover tamped down.

He’s only just starting to find his rhythm on the hand crank when Carol finds him, sneaking up and pinching his side like he’s not the kind of guy to throw an elbow. He jumps, making a face when he realizes it’s her.

“Who told you how to find the library?”

“Ha ha,” she says, rolling her eyes under her shellacked fringe. “This was like, mine and Tommy’s favorite spot.” She has both her hands stuffed in the pockets of her windbreaker and she points them at the little study room in the corner. “Primo make-out real estate. We had to give it up once Steve and Nancy took it over.”

“Like I want to know that.”

“Right? I’ve already thrown up like, six times this morning.” And then, proving that she’s never actually spent any legitimate time in a library in her life, she pulls her hands out of her jacket and waggles a packet of chewing gum at him.   

She scoffs at his raised eyebrows, folding a piece into her mouth and jumping up onto the sill next to the sharpener. The gum cracks obnoxiously loud as she gives him a scrolling once over, swinging her feet, enjoying his impatience.

“Get lucky last night?”

He gives her a flat look. “What do you want, Carol?”

A shrug. “Did Mindy find you?”

“Who?”

“Mindy Miller? I told her you’d show last night.” She gives him a lewd smile around her chewing. “She’s _very_ interested in visiting the Golden State.”

Billy remembers, vaguely, the girl with the vodka. So she’s Miller’s sister.

“Not interested.”

Even as the words are out of his mouth he hears how flimsy they are, remembering how quick Carol was to push Wheeler into the pool last night, and how patient before that.

“I mean, you disappeared,” she continues, oblivious, preoccupied with her nails. “I thought maybe you’d taken her on the tour.” She changes tack. “Did you hear the rumor?”

He shakes his head.

She grins, reaching out to toy with the sherpa lining of his collar. “This is nice…”

“What rumor?” he sighs.  

“Oh,” she cracks her gum smugly, sitting back. “Just that Stevie boy cheated on Lacey last night.”

He has to duck his head to disguise the insistent pull of a smile in the corners of his mouth. He hadn’t even known Lacey was at the party. The thought of her dripping on the foyer tiles, tapping her foot, fills him with warm satisfaction.

“Maybe he just went to bed early like a good boy.”

“Yeah, I don’t buy it,” Carol says, cracking her gum, “but no one could find him during the brownout and he was supposed to walk her home.”

He can’t quite keep the smirk out of his voice. “Think he got eaten by a bear?”

“He’s going to wish he was when his parents get back tomorrow. And Lacey’s going to go _nuclear_ if he doesn’t turn up with flowers.”

He snorts. “There a reason you’re not boring Tommy with this shit?”

She blows an unimpressed bubble, bursting it over her lip. “Can’t. He and Steve are skipping.”

He looks at her blankly.

“Boy time,” she says with an eye roll, as if that explains it.

He frowns, vaguely aware that Carol’s still talking, distracted with trying to find a place to stick her gum on the sill.

“—don’t know why I thought it would be different this time around. Like, what if I wanted to skip too, huh? And it’s not like either of them know how to clean a house properly, I’ve seen Steve try to use the creepy-crawly like a vacuum. They’re probably just gonna lie around all day watching their stupid karate movies and they’ll only invite me over when they need food—”

He tugs the window blinds apart so he can look up the slope to the parking lot and— there’s his car, parked in Harrington’s spot. There’s even an empty spot beside it still. It’s a dull feeling, in his chest, at seeing it. A weight, like his body’s just remembered how tired it is.

“—not like I spent _months_ working on Tommy to get him to cool off—”

So Harrington’s skipping. Big deal. Of course he’s skipping; they were wasted. If Billy could afford the truancy he would skip too.

“Billy. You okay?”

Yeah. Yes, of course he is. Why wouldn’t he be?

Harrington was more wasted than him, if he remembers it right. He’s pretty sure he remembers it right: sharing the joint, the bottle. Harrington’s shitty taste in music.

Carol’s looking at him with her eyebrows raised questioningly and the sun behind her is making the edges of her blowout glow, burning it onto his retinas.

Maybe he’s a little queasy.

“I uh…” He grabs the blinds again, squinting out the window just to make sure. Yep. No bimmer. Just the Camaro, the sunlight reflecting off its powder-blue roof in a way that makes his eyes ache.

“I gotta hurl,” he says, turning his back on her, walking fast, ignoring the spangles of light playing over his eyes in the darkened stacks.  

 _God_. Why’d he— They shared _one_ joint. It’s not like— And parking in the guy’s spot like an invitation.

And.

The zippo. His zippo. Waiting in Harrington’s locker like—

Idiot.

 _Idiot_.

^^^

How many shitty ceilings has he looked up at in his life, Billy wonders, head on his pillow, watching sundown play out on the stucco. He flicks the baseball up, spinning up, up in a straight line, and then down, landing in his palm with a soft _thump_.

How many does he still have to look forward to?

At least this one’s clean. A little slapdash on the paint, built up and crummy at the edges; maybe the work of a family just like this one needing to patch over their sins and get out quick. When they left Hayward it was so sudden they didn’t even have time to clean up after the roach bomb. Anything desperate enough to live crawled into their packing boxes during the night and made the trip to Hawkins with them. He wonders what the family who moved in after them thought of the faint signs of a life the Hargrove-Mayfields left behind. If they peeled Maxine’s stickers off the fridge. If they covered up the Billy-shaped dent in the drywall.

Flick, _thump_ –  a little wonky this time. He catches the ball by his temple. It’s old, smudged with fingerprints, polished smooth by two generations worth of being caught. He shuffles it in his fingers to find the coarse line of stitching, tossing it up again. Baseball’s not his game – but this is his ball, since he was a baby. His mom probably teethed him on the thing. He can still remember  - six, maybe seven - the hitched breath feeling of discovering it in a tucked away shoebox, under his baby clothes. Under the letters from his dad.

Dad.

Billy Grouser had a dad, and he wrote love letters and drew little cartoons, doodles in the margins of newspaper cuttings and on motel notepads and on the back of postcards from places Billy could find on a map. With a name he could find in the phone book.

Flick, _thump_.

No putting the lid back on that shoebox. Not for him, anyway.

Flick, _thump_.

The radio hiccups. The station is just a blare of static somewhere between the twang of a country guitar and what seems to be a police dispatch – murmured retorts back and forth too fuzzy to decipher. Could be Chinese for all he can make them out. He could get up and change it but the in-between-ness suits him just fine. Whatever drowns out the stutter of canned laughter and studio applause coming from the living room.

His mind wanders to the envelope with the zippo inside sitting in Harrington’s locker and he groans, rubbing his palms into his eyes like he can press the image out of his brain. _Idiot_. The ball rolls off his chest, settling in the dip of his side.

“That’s some throwing arm you got there.”

Billy drops his hands, ignoring the faint tickle of instinct reminding him to _get up, stand up straight_.

His dad’s fresh from his shift, work clothes just a little creased at the elbows but otherwise neat as ever, in the doorway watching Billy like he’s got something he wants to say and doesn’t know how to say it unless Billy stands up.

“I already put the trash out,” he says, fishing the ball up onto his chest and looking at the ceiling again. The sun’s set and the circle of lamplight from his nightstand doesn’t reach all the way into the corners. There’s an empty beer can on the carpet not quite tucked out of sight that Neil might call him out for if the mood takes him.

“And you offered to help with the dishes?”

He grunts. Yes

His dad stays put in the doorframe. “Susan tells me you didn’t eat much of your dinner.”

Susan and her big mouth.

“It tastes like shit, dad.”

“Watch it.”

Billy clenches his jaw to stop from rolling his eyes. It’s not really Susan’s fault he has no appetite, but it’s not like it was going to make a valiant comeback for cabbage soup and ham steaks.

“Susan’s taking your sister to the new mall next week to shop for a summer frock,” Neil says. “She thinks it’s a good idea for you to join them.”

“I’m good.”

“You’ll go.”

He grits his teeth. _Fine_. Just how he wants to spend his first weekend out of school – playing chauffeur while Max picks out a fucking trainer bra.

That should be it, pretty standard heart-to-heart, but his dad lingers, watching him. For just a second Billy entertains the idea of him saying something like, _What’s up, sport?_ But it rings false, even in his head. As insincere as the laugh-track spilling from the TV down the hall. He just can’t make it fit – not any more than the idea of the man who sat in diner booths penning letters full of poetry and promises on the back of take-out menus.

He’s still there, one hand caught on the doorframe when Billy turns to look, eyes like cold lead.

“You’re not getting in trouble again are you, Billy?”

Trouble.

Would he even know what it looks like this time.

“No, dad.”

“Bill.”

“I said I’m _not_ —” in trouble. He’s not.

His dad breathes out through his nose and pushes off the frame, appeased for now. He points at the radio. “Turn that shit down. Susan’s trying to watch her shows.”

Billy turns it off.

^^^

She wasn’t there. He remembers now, that day at the beach. He was under a full minute, panicking, lost. And when he popped back up like a cork he was looking for her before he even realized he could breathe again, his throat choked so tight with fear he couldn’t even cry out.

But she wasn’t looking for him. Because she wasn’t there.

That’s how it really feels. Drowning.

^^^

The Palace is okay as far as arcades go. Not really his thing but it’s not like he hates loud music or flashing lights. Problem is it’s full of kids and tourists and about a square dozen of Max’s little friends who can see him, Billy Hargrove, killing time on a perfectly good date night. But apparently this is what Respect and Responsibility looks like: flirting with the weirdo clerk girl for free cokes and trying not to breathe in too much nerd sweat.

He posts up at his usual spot at the counter and keeps Max in the corner of his eye out of habit.

What a fucking hellcat, he thinks idly, sipping his drink as he watches her jostle her way through the crowd to get from one game to the next. She probably thinks he can’t see Sinclair hiding in amongst the stalls with her. Is he supposed to believe she keeps looking up from her score to grin at the wall? The kid’s completely whipped, following her around, content just to watch as she plays.

“So, in that way, you could say Simon is their conscience, and when he dies, goodness on the island dies too,” clerk girl says cheerily.

Billy’s skeptical. “And…he’s Jesus?”

“Uh huh. Try these.” She hands him another pair of ugly sunglasses from the wheel-around display, standing back appraisingly while he tries them on, pulling a face. Get used to this, he says to himself. Might as well throw in with the rejects now, and it’s not like she’s that bad to talk to, even if she’s certified loony-tunes crazy.

“So what about the fat kid then?” he asks, giving her the glasses back. “If goodness is already dead, why does Jack waste him with that rock?” 

“What? _No_.” She looks up from her search. “ _Roger_ kills Piggy,” she says. “Look.” She slaps a napkin down on the counter, pulling a pen off of her lanyard to sketch a compass of intersecting lines with scribbled names at each point. “Roger is Simon’s foil the same way Jack is Ralph’s.” She taps the diagram. “Evil and good, order and chaos. They’re supposed to be balanced. When Simon dies, there’s nothing to hold Roger in check.”

He squints at the diagram where she’s circled one of the names. “So now Roger’s the bad guy?”

She throws the pen down, grimacing. “You know, you’re lucky you look the way you do, because you are capital-D _dumb_ , my friend.”

He smirks. “You know, this whole cold fish thing you have going on…I bet I could find you a guy thinks it’s a turn on.”

She leans forward too, arms crossing on the sticky red laminate in front of him. “Wow. That is _flattering_. Thank you.”

“De nada. When—”

“Billy,” Max says at his elbow, giving him a filthy look when he sets his drink down in annoyance. “More quarters.”

“Maxine. Where _are_ your manners?”

She doesn’t answer, holding out her hand.

He makes a show of checking his pockets unhurriedly, patting himself down. It’s Susan’s money – meant for gas and not games, and definitely not for his smokes. But Max is the one who keeps selling her mother the lie, and Billy is the one who knows how much they can skim and still make it to school and back, so basically they’re at a stalemate over who decides how to spend their cut. 

“Billy,” she says impatiently, even after he’s dumped a handful of skin-warm change in her hand.

“ _Wha-at_?” he says, masking the sharpness of his tone with his most fraternal smile.

“This is only enough for one game!”

“Cry me a river, Polly Pocket. Why don’t you go ask one of your friends for an advance?”

Her eyes narrow, fixing with determination on his front jean pocket like she’s contemplating if it’s worth it to lose a hand to make a try for the money. Joke’s on her – Billy can barely fit his own hand in there.

He’s sure she’s going to throw a fit – mouth hardening, cheeks turning red – but she flounces off instead, ponytail flicking in a way that he doesn’t even remotely trust.

He leans back on the counter, watching her suspiciously as she reconvenes with the rest of the geek squad over near one of the claw machines. She’s having an animated conversation with the gummy one, who seems to think that whatever she’s saying is disastrously not okay, throwing his hands up in protest – and then all of them are turning as one to stare at him.

Billy starts. The _fuck_. He glares back.

“Oh wow,” clerk girl says behind him. “Think they’re gonna jump you for quarters?”

“They can try.”

An awed breath. “Which one do you think will give you the most trouble? The skinny one or the one with the He-Man backpack?”

He swivels around to turn his glare on her too. “Those little assholes—"

“Oh, _yes_ , these,” she says, shoving a pair of yellow-lensed aviators at him. “Oh yeah.” She nods, self-satisfied once he’s put them on. “That’s the money right there.” She looks at her watch. “And that, good sir, is my shift. Finish that before Keith sees,” she says, meaning the Coke. “And, take this with you.” She pushes the napkin towards him.

“You sneak your number in here or something?”

“Funny. Enjoy your hot date.” She points two fingers guns at the napkin.  

He scowls at her as she backs out the staff door. Cer-ti-fiable.

He takes her advice and finishes the drink, crushing the can out of habit and laying it up into the bin to the exact appreciation of no one, the nearest audience laser-focused on rattling a joystick around. The psychopaths have dispersed when he looks up again so he pockets the napkin and does a lap.

It takes a while to find Max. There’s so many kids darting around each other to get at consoles it’s borderline claustrophobic. He’s right on the precipice of a bad temper, just about to holler, when he spots her on the other side of the room getting crowded out of a game by a couple of lanky tourist kids with trucker hats on.

“Hey,” Billy says sharply, getting their attention. “Find another game.” He makes sure he has Max’s eye to signal he’s going outside, and that he’s watching her, and that she and her friends better not pull any of their usual goonie-gang shit or he’s going to tie her skateboard to railway tracks. She gives him a sour look in reply which says she understands just fine.

He pushes his way outside. It’s cold; dry enough that his breath fogs in front of him, but the air tastes good. Crisp and clean, less B.O and old popcorn. He flips his collar up, leaning on one of the posts, tugging his jacket tight around his midsection. The kids’ bikes are right next to the entrance, all thrown on top of each other, unlocked. He ignores the impulse to do something about it, shaking his head. _Small fucking towns_.

There’s nothing really to do without a smoke to count the minutes so he watches the strip instead, the people wandering in between parked cars, in and out of the streetlight, laughing and holding hands. It’s a busy night in Hawkins for anyone with a life.

“I’m not giving you any more money,” he says softly when Max appears at his elbow again. “Go leach off someone else.”

There’s a couple getting out of their car across from the video store. She needs help with her dress and he’s zipping it up, moving her hair out of the way like he doesn’t care it’s probably full of spray, putting his jacket around her shoulders. If it snowed right now they’d look like two figurines in a snow globe that Billy could shake and shake and shake. And Max _still_ isn’t leaving, an insistent blot at the edge of his vision, refusing to be ignored, to just let him _be_.

“ _Max, what_ — _?_ ”

It’s not Max.

“Whoa,” Harrington says. “Nice frames.”

Billy snatches the glasses off his face so fast it’s like they were never there, Harrington re-colorizing in front of his eyes, stark and real as dreaming. Billy’s eyes dart everywhere, all over him, remembering him wet and not dry, not dressed up in nice jeans, clean sneakers. Done up sharp and soft.

“The fuck are you doing here, Harrington?”

Harrington makes a face, holding an enormous walkie-talkie up between them like it’s supposed to make some kind of sense.

“You don’t have change for ten dollars in quarters, do you?” 

“Quarters,” he says blankly, struggling to connect Harrington with the spill of light and noise from the arcade at his back, the electronic chime and rattle of machines. “Didn’t take you for the arcade type.”

Harrington scoffs, scrubbing a hand into his hair. “No. Me? No. I’m not. This is... This is blackmail.” He frowns. “This is blackmail.”

Billy doesn’t have anything to say to that. 

“So,” Harrington says, his good-boy manners picking up the slack. “What are you doing out here, Hargrove? Planning your getaway?”

“What?”

“Your getaway?” Harrington says, a tired edge to his voice. “Escape from Hawkins, hightail it for the coast... Figured you’d want to outrun the snow.”

“It’s not snowing.”

“Well, not with that attitude,” he says, an echo of Billy’s words from the other night, eyes snagging on the showy opening of Billy's shirt. “You might want to get a winter coat.”

“Why the fuck would I need one if I’m running, huh?” he snaps. It comes out too hard, too brittle. Harrington recoils a little, his face smoothing. He’d been smiling, Billy realizes.

“I’m—” he starts, but stalls. There’s nothing he can say now to bring it back. “It’s too early,” he ends up muttering, meaning everything. Both. He turns away before something even lamer can come out of his mouth. The way Harrington is staring at him is...something. Unbearable. He has to look at the parking lot for a bit.

God, he’s some sort of pathetic. All he’s wanted from Harrington is a bite and now he can’t bear the thought of the sting.

Harrington draws up alongside him. “It’s almost Christmas,” he says after a while, casual enough. But he could mean it both ways, too.

Billy snorts, eyes darting traitorously. “Don’t think I’m gonna get what I want under the tree."

A shrug. “I don’t have a tree. And some asshole crashed my party and drank my present.”

“Buy a new tree,” Billy says. “Buy a new present.”

Harrington sucks air through his teeth. “Yeah, see, I would..? But it’s gonna snow.”

He has to cough to hide a laugh, looking at Harrington out the side of his eye.

“Come on,” Harrington says, tilting his head towards the arcade. “Show me around nerd city.”

Like that’ll go over well.

“I think I’m good here.”

“Yeah, I’m not going in there alone. Come on,” he says, and tosses Billy the walkie.

He has to rip his hands out of his pockets in time to catch it, an objection sharp in his throat. But when he turns Harrington’s already gone, the door swinging open behind him like a taunt. _Fucking_ —

He lasts all of two seconds before he has to follow him.

Harrington doesn’t need him anyway, only gets halfway to the counter before the brats are converging on him in an excited mob, the whole lot of them, even Max, and she has a sophisticated mistrust of guys Billy’s age and up.

“Hey, hey!” Harrington says, shimmying around to avoid their grasping hands. “Watch the threads, Henderson.”

“Steve. What the shit is this, Steve?” the gummy one says, holding up the ten-dollar bill. “This is not what we agreed.”

“Relax, okay. I’m going to change it.”

“Keith doesn’t _do_ change,” Max moans at the same time Byers’ kid brother pipes up with a shy, “Thanks, Steve.”

“ _Thanks, Steve_ ,” Wheeler’s brother simpers, yanking the bill back and putting it in Harrington’s hands. “Hurry up and bring our quarters.”

Harrington takes their mouthing off at him in his stride, comfortable in their midst even though he’s outnumbered and out of place, head and shoulders taller, starkly cool-looking against the backdrop of sweaty nerds and space-print carpet.

“Why’s he got your walkie, man?” Sinclair asks, noticing Billy.

Now that Billy looks, they’ve all got matching walkies on them. Max too - a big one he’s willing to bet is a perfect match for Harrington’s. What kind of E.T.-phone-home bullshit…

“Steve. Steve, that’s not an approved use of the system. Get it back.”

Billy sneers, holding it out of reach.

“Give it back, asshole,” gums – Henderson – says, which is a hell of a lot braver than what Baby Byers can manage, the poor kid transfixed with terror, staring at a point on Billy’s chest like he can’t bring himself to look up into his eyes. Billy remembers now, Henderson’s the one who egged Harrington on that night. _Kick his ass, Steve_. His sneer firms up, grip on the thing tightening.

“Billy,” Max says petulantly.

“ _Oh_ my god,” Harrington says, nudging him hard in the ribs and swiping the walkie-talkie out of his hand. “Take this,” he says to one of them, shoving Billy towards the counter by the lapel of his jacket. Billy shakes his hands off with a sharp look but Harrington’s already past him again, expecting Billy to follow, pretty pleased with himself if the set of his shoulders is anything to go by, and— yep, looking over his shoulder with that shit-eating grin. “What was that team you told me to try out for?”

Billy scowls back, not trusting himself to speak, lungs caught. Harrington’s winded him with that elbow, his whole body stinging along one side.

“No freebies,” Keith says as Harrington approaches. He watches Billy put the sunglasses back on the display with wary disdain. First time here, first week in Hawkins, he’d tried to tell Billy not to bring his smoking inside. Billy had answered with a lit butt flicked at his name badge. That should have earned him a pretty dependable degree of hatred out of the guy. But it’s nothing – _nothing_ – compared to how much this guy hates Harrington.

For his part, Harrington seems completely oblivious to it, smooth-talking his way through an explanation with the usual combination of charm and high-handed friendliness.

“No. Freebies,” Keith says again, impassive, once Harrington is done.

“Okay,” he says, frowning. “What if I buy something? A, uh…” He grabs a handful of twizzlers out of the display on the counter. “These.”

Keith stares at him and puts another frito in his mouth. “Strawberry milkshake,” he says when he’s done chewing.

They both recoil. “ _What_?”

“Strawberry. Milkshake. You buy one, I’ll change a twenty.”

Harrington hisses, “ _Twenty_ —” And Billy thinks he’s going to spew, but he folds his wallet out with a dark look, grumbling. It’s enough quarters to not see Maxine outside of the arcade for a week.

“And it’s a dollar for the candy,” Keith adds, punching something into the till to make its drawer pop open.

Max and Sinclair pounce once Keith is done cleaning the register out of change, scraping the small fortune of quarters off the counter and snagging the twizzlers too, Sinclair keeping both eyes on Billy like it’s a real possibility he’s going to decide he wants their fucking candy.

He makes sure Sinclair knows he could if he wanted to, lazing on one elbow, casual but close enough to menace.

“Hold this,” Harrington says, startling him into grabbing the styrofoam cup that’s been shoved against his chest. Billy only takes it out of shock, not wanting to spill it down his front. He pushes his way roughly after him, intent on giving him the drink back as violently as necessary, but by the time he catches up it’s to find Harrington already busy slotting a quarter in one of the pinball machines.

“You’re shitting me.”

Harrington waggles his eyebrows at the start-up music, all cocky, like Billy’s supposed to stick around and be impressed. He eyeballs the cup. “Don’t drink that.”  

Billy’s lip curls. “Don’t like sweet things.”

“Go figure,” Harrington says drily, rubbing his hands together with a flourish like he’s about to perform surgery and not immediately sink that quarter.

Which he does - pretty spectacularly fast. One ball after the other racketing off the sides and slipping down the gutter past the flippers. It’s painful. Billy should cringe but then he’d have to look away from Harrington sucking so hard at something. The alley’s too full of people busy with their own games and there’s no one watching to share his distress anyway.

Harrington isn’t put off. Doesn’t seem to mind too much finding out the game’s more of a challenge than he thought. Billy supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised; Harrington seems like he likes things easy – makes things _look_ easy – but the guy did try it on with Nancy Wheeler after all.

He watches as Harrington pulls the launch pin and sends the ball arching in a slow loop over the playfield, managing to sweep it up with a flipper this time, only to have it chute down the center and through a moment later. The game over jingle sounds.

Harrington shrugs, feeding another quarter into the side of the machine. _Jesus H. Christ_.

“Don’t bat so much.”

Harrington smirks without taking his eyes off the table as the first ball loads, but he takes Billy’s advice and lays off the controllers, waiting for the ball.

He keeps it in play for a good couple of minutes this time before he knocks it into the out-lane. On the next turn he manages to stripe it up into the bonus target - beginner’s luck. Harrington crows, smacking the side of the cabinet in celebration and Billy grins back condescendingly, waiting for him to realize the ball’s still in play, which he does, just in time, scrambling to get his fingers back on the controllers and catch the downward trajectory of the ball.

Harrington’s a quick learner; natural at it, quiet when he’s focused, completely absorbed, eyes gleaming, trying to butt up against the table with his body like that’s gonna do anything other than get him a tilt warning. He beats the flippers reflexively as the ball putters around at the top of the board. He’s gotten some sleep since Billy saw him last, maybe, and he looks better for it, brighter, the tired cast from before bleached away by the funhouse twist of light from the game. Even his teeth look whiter where he’s biting his lip...  

Billy could watch him forever, losing at something.

“ _Fuck_ , did you see that?”

Harrington’s beaming at him. He’s missed some sort of win somehow. 

He clears his throat. “Yeah yeah. Don’t go signing up for the nerd Olympics just yet.”

Harrington snorts, fishing out another quarter. “That’s a shame.” He pulls one hand off the side of the cabinet, middle finger up. “I already got the gold medal for you right here.” 

Billy rolls his eyes, thrusting the milkshake at him. “Move over, butterfingers. I can’t watch you drain another ball.”

Harrington bitches but he moves aside to let Billy knuckle the quarter in. He wipes the condensation on his jeans. The trick is to stand further out from the machine and put your weight forward. There’s a string of battered machines in shitty road stop diners all the way from Cali to Indiana that will testify to that.

“You do know you don’t get to beat anyone up at this game, right?”

Billy punches the launcher so hard Harrington actually jumps.

The ball fires over the playfield, chiming against the bumpers, zipping from one side to the other and finally slowing to settle in the bonus target. The machine trills, racking up his points.

Billy bites his tongue hard. _Eat your heart out, pretty boy._

“I can see you smiling, asshole.”

He catches the ball on the tip of a flipper, showing off, and wings it back up into the target. Textbook. 

He bites his tongue harder but it’s no use. Harrington’s frowning at him. 

“Did you drink some of this? It feels lighter.”

“No,” Billy lies.

A few people turn to watch when the high-scores board lights up a while later, but Billy’s too busy having fun, trying to stop the gloating laugh that comes out whenever he gets more points and makes Harrington gasp and scowl.

He takes a moment while the third ball is loading to check on Maxine, catching a glimpse of her hunched over a joystick, one of the guys from before braced on an arm over her, observing.

“Hey, _Cindy_ ,” he barks. The guy looks up. “What’d I say? Touch that machine again and see what happens.”

Harrington follows his gaze, eyebrows raised. “Protective much?”

“Where’d all these fucking tourists come from, huh?”

He looks back just in time to catch the bemused look on Harrington’s face, lips sealed shut like he’s trying not to laugh or say something that will get his ass beat.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Billy glares at him suspiciously but the game demands his attention, insisting he look as the ball ricochets off the bumpers noisily. He shouldn’t try his luck, but fuck it, he’s already given Harrington a masterclass in winning, he might as well school him in cheating too. He waits for the right sweep of the ball over the playfield and bangs his hips up into the machine to force the ball into the bonus socket, nudging the cabinet off its feet just a little, careful not to trigger the tilt warning. The ball suckers in obediently and he looks up, victorious, prepared to say, _and that’s how you treat a lady_ but—

Harrington’s smiling, like he doesn’t want to be, real nice. He’s stripped out of his jacket, Billy realizes, his t-shirt something expensive - fine material that catches. Billy can smell his laundry detergent again, crisp and cottony – and the woodsy, peppery notes of his cologne where it’s drying off warm skin.

“Now who’s got butterfingers,” Harrington teases, eyeing the display and Billy follows his gaze down in time to see the ball tip off the end of his dropped flipper and disappear down the chute, the machine buzzing angrily, _TILT, TILT, TILT_.

“Aw, man. Amateur hour,” some kid watching says, shaking his head and walking away. Billy drops the machine, embarrassed.    

Harrington hasn’t noticed. “There’s got to be something here I can kick your ass at.”

Billy snorts. “Yeah, whack-a-mole, maybe.”

“Sure. What are the rules?”

It stuns a laugh out of him. “I’ll give you a primer in the parking lot.”

Harrington snorts, looking at him quizzically, trying to catch up with the joke but content not to it seems like. It’s a look Billy can’t quite hold, heart hooked under his ribs. He fumbles a cigarette out of his pocket, putting it in between his lips, just to do something he knows how to do.

“I’m— Match,” he explains, clearing his throat again, patting his pockets.

Harrington’s tone is easy. “Lost your night light?”

Billy stares. 

His mouth is crooked up on one side, eyes gleaming. He’s smiling. Harrington _knows_ and. And he’s fucking with him. But he’s smiling too.

It doesn’t sting like he thought it would: the bite.

“Hey, quit it,” someone says loudly, forcing him to look away. Something’s happening, kids looking up from their games towards the entrance. The voice comes again, higher pitched this time, edged with desperation. “I said _quit it_ , dickface.”

“Did you hear—” he turns to ask, frowning, but Harrington’s already moving, weaving his way towards the sounds. Billy swears under his breath, pushing down the alley after him, his skin burning all over with cold as they stumble outside.

“What the hell are you doing?” Harrington chokes out before Billy’s even fully taken in the scene.

Sinclair is down, he sees, spilled coins around him like spent shrapnel; Wheeler’s brother, scrambling on the ground next to him, trying to piece together a walkie-talkie that’s been smashed into about a hundred parts. There’s a big guy standing over them, arms on him like cannons. He’s got Zombie Boy by the bowl cut, shaking him down, and his buddy – the lanky one – has Henderson.  

“What the hell are you _doing_?” Harrington says again, his voice so dark it shakes. “They’re just kids.”

Henderson makes a pitiful noise. The lanky guy’s slapping him around the face, not too hard, but faster than he can get his hands up for. That’s the fun of it, Billy remembers from his days experimenting as a lunchtime bully. 

Harrington lunges at them.

Ah, shit.

“Hey,” he says, resigned, to the one holding Byers. “You’re wasting your time. Kid hasn’t got any money. Trust me, I’ve seen the house.”

The big guy’s face scrunches up. “What do you want, _faggot_?”

That searing word, like a tug at the scruff of his neck. He’s struck dizzy with the shock of it. So surprised to hear it, here, tonight, that the cigarette almost drops right out of his mouth. He flicks it aside, stepping forward. “The _fuck_ you call me?”

“Oh, shit,” Henderson says.

“Billy don’t!”

The big guy tosses Byers aside too late. Billy’s got him by the shoulder, wrenching him down onto the fist aimed at his kidneys. He slugs him once, twice, nails him in the jaw as he slides down to the ground. Please stay down, Billy thinks, trying to shove him off where he’s folding, slumped against him. He looks around, catching sight of Maxine. She’s got her skateboard out like she’s honest to god thinking she’s going to do some serious damage with it (and probably get him boarded up in his room for the rest of his life).

“No fucking way,” he barks at her, jabbing a finger at the car. “Get—” But he’s cut off, stumbling as Harrington knocks into him. It takes him a moment to realize Harrington’s not attacking him, that he only cares about getting his hands in the big guy’s shirt, hauling him up off his knees so he can slam his fist into his face, following him down. “They’re just _kids_ ,” he shouts again, wild-eyed, hitting him again. And again. Kind of maybe trying to brain him on the pavement.

Lanky guy has been laid out cold.

Jesus, Billy thinks, trying to catch his breath, a little impressed. Harrington’s _deranged_.

“What the _fuck_ , Steve!” The familiar voice rings out in the lot, ending the fight like a gunshot.

It’s Lacey. Lacey with her arms crossed, maybe because she’s furious, maybe because she’s just really fucking cold in her pretty dress. She has Tommy and Carol with her, he realizes, something about it sparking his memory. Something about bowling…

Harrington drops the guy, panting. Lanky guy must have got a hit in at some point because he’s bleeding from somewhere, his mouth bloody. Billy can see him swallowing, sucking air, trying to keep his shit together.

“You left _an hour_ _ago,_ ” Lacey says. 

Billy’s stomach does a backflip. The date. The _double_ date. Harrington skipped out on their date.

“Inside, now, Max,” he says. Maybe there’s something about his tone but she listens for once, picking her friends up off the floor.

Harrington still hasn’t answered her, standing there like he’s been struck mute. Lacey looks him up and down, her mouth pursing. Billy’s suddenly irrationally afraid she’s going to spit on him - afraid that Harrington’s not going to be able to take it.

But all she says is: “You’re a piece of shit, Steve Harrington.” Defeated but not surprised. The crowd is already dispersing, disappointed. Lacey’s awkward as hell out in the cold in her thin dress, waiting for her date to come put a jacket on her. Whatever she sees in Harrington isn’t enough for her to stick around and wait. She swallows whatever was going to come next and shakes her head and leaves, Carol snapping to heel after a quick imploring face at Tommy. 

“So,” Tommy tries, once she’s gone. "I guess you didn’t get that drink for her then.”

“Shut up, Tommy,” Harrington says harshly.

“Hey, man, it’s not so bad,” Tommy says, misreading, reaching for him. “We can fix this—”

Harrington slaps his hand away, shoving him to follow up. “Shut the fuck up, Tommy! Shut _up_!”

Tommy’s not moving, stunned. His mouth flaps open to say something and Harrington shoves him again, snarling, and Billy’s sure he’s going to take a swing, but then he’s gone too, storming away across the lot.

Tommy rubs a shaky hand over his mouth and his eyes meet Billy’s. It’s too much silence to fill and he doesn’t even know where to start with the look on Tommy’s face, the layers of hurt and anger. Tommy’s embarrassed again, like that morning in his house - a sore spot he doesn’t want Billy to see. Billy knows that feeling well enough himself to let him go, chase after his girlfriend, get in his car and go home. 

And just like that the lot's empty again. Quiet thick with cold. 

He darts a look at the arcade. There's no one left watching. Even Max and her friends have been smart enough to retreat back inside where it’s warm. 

It’s a long walk across the asphalt in the dark, the air biting at his hands and throat. Harrington’s parked under the furthest street lamp, at the edge of the light, sitting on the lip of his open trunk, bowed over with his hands clasped in front of his head. He’s shaking. 

“So,” he says after a while. “You’re kind of a psycho, Harrington.”

Harrington makes a bitter noise from between his legs. “Like I want to hear that from you.”

Billy nods understandingly.

“They’re just kids,” Harrington says after a while, quiet.

“I know.”

His voice is odd. “ _It’s fucked up_.”

Billy’s not sure what to say to that. He went through the same crucible as any other kid. Picked at and picked on until he could give back just as good as he got. He thinks of Max’s skinned palms.

“They can handle themselves.”

“You don’t _get it_ ,” Harrington moans. “He was just some _guy_ and I still couldn’t— Couldn’t _stop_ him.”

“Well don’t take this the wrong way, sweetheart. But you kind of can’t fight for shit.”

Harrington doesn’t laugh but his shoulders tense, annoyed. 

“C’mon. Let me see.”

Harrington tilts his head up. It’s not so bad. There’s blood all down his nice shirt but it’s just from his nose, dripping over his lips and off his chin. The look in his eyes is where he’s really hurt, his jaw clenched so tight he’s trembling.

“Tip your head back,” he says.

“Actually, you’re not supposed to— _Ow_!” He flinches at the cuff off Billy’s jacket pushed up under his nose, forcing his head back. “Use something soft, asshole!”

“Jesus, what a fucking princess,” Billy mutters, fumbling the napkin out of his pocket and pressing it to Harrington’s busted face as gentle as he’ll allow himself. Harrington slaps his hands out of the way anyway, taking it for himself, the white paper blossoming red through in seconds. He glares at Billy over the top of it.

It's goddamn freezing. He’s not built for this sort of cold. Harrington’s got a fine shiver running through him, bare arms almost blue with cold, but he doesn’t seem to want to do anything about it or even care. 

“Think you might have hurt Tommy’s feelings back there.”

“Yeah, well,” he says with a thin laugh. “He’s a shitty friend.”

“Not to you.”

Harrington blinks at him.

“You’re kind of the shitty friend,” Billy continues. 

Harrington lets out an incredulous sound, staring. 

Billy picks at the muddy stain on his jacket sleeve. He should go. He can still get it out, scrub it out, with cold water, if he gets to it before it dries. It’s not too late to do that.

“How’re the goods?” he asks, the car creaking under his weight as he sits next to him.

Harrington shows him. There’s just a bit of blood left ringed under each nostril, mostly smeared to pink over his top lip. Billy swallows. 

“You know, just because you found someone to thump you doesn’t mean you get out of me owing you one.”

Harrington snorts and then winces, pressing the napkin tighter under his nose and glaring at Billy like that’s somehow his fault. After a while his hands drop into his lap.

Billy rubs his own hands down his legs to get some feeling back in them and, after a thought, draws his smokes out of his pocket, tapping one out of the pack. Harrington smirks weakly and pulls Billy’s Zippo out of the back of his jeans, passing it over.

It takes him three tries to light the damn thing, strangely self-conscious about it. He draws in a breath and offers it to Harrington without being asked. They smoke in silence. It’s a good cigarette, even if he only gets half of it.

“What the hell are you smiling at?” he asks after a while, catching the wry look on Harrington’s face.

“Nothing,” Harrington says. He snorts. “Told you.”

“Told me what?”

Harrington squints one eye, tilting his face up in profile. Billy follows suit, looking up. And up. At the night sky and the strange pinprick galaxy of eddying snowflakes falling and vanishing into the lamplight over their heads. He breathes out watching it, time going slow and quiet, the matched plumes of their breathing rising up to meet it. 

When he finally looks away Harrington is watching him, eyebrow cocked.

Billy doesn’t know what the hell he’s so smug about. It’s not even really snow, delicate as dust, barely there. Just a promise of a thing.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who left comments during my hissyfit mcmeltdown hiatus. It really guilted me into writing again. 
> 
> New songs added to the [Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ovtygtvvCjF0vvOXKRY2j)! And here is me on the hellsite [@harringroveheart](https://harringroveheart.tumblr.com/post/189247586462/harringroveheart-oepheliawrites-moodboard)  
> 


End file.
